Drafts and ventilation

seamus

Two that may have easy answers. My house was built in the late 80s. It's not cold per se, and it's terraced, which helps. But there's virtually no insulation on the plaster work. There's about an inch between the plasterboard and the blockwork, and that's not insulated. Upstairs has stud walls and there appears to be some small amount of insulation, but not much.

There seems to be cold spots in the house, which from what I can tell are mainly caused by drafts. I've managed to find and seal up some of the more obvious ones, but others ones exist that I can't put my finger on, e.g. when you open the bathroom window and no others, some doors will start gently swaying open and closed as if they're in an air current. On a windy day, the door to the sitting room has a little bit of a noticeable "push" on it from air flowing into the room towards the fireplace.

Are there any simple tricks to find the source of these, e.g. burning an incense stick and following the smoke, or something?

Would putting something in front of the fireplace when it's not in use be of much benefit?

We had the windows replaced when we moved in, I'm fairly happy they're well sealed up.


I also then have the opposite issue in the main bedroom - not enough ventilation. Over winter the windows in the room get completely covered in condensation from having two people in it all night. The room isn't particularly stuffy unless we turn the radiator on, which we never do.
There is a vent in the wall, but the hole seems pretty small - probably about 5cm square. There is definitely a larger hole in the blockwork behind it, the hole in the plaster is small - would there be any benefit in cutting back the plasterwork to make the hole bigger? Or is that pointless?

Calahonda52

Seamus, at 54000 posts !, can you post a picture or two please.

I am interested in seeing if the wall vents are ducted to the plasterboard: I suspect not and what is happening is the wind is coming in the hole in the wall and getting in behind the plaster board, so take off the inner cover and have a look see.

I have written about this before here, maybe advanced google with boards as domain and my username and wall vents as must have key words

If you are not using the fireplace them yes get a chimney ballon, google it.
an open fireplace can lose 40% of the heat in the house

seamus

Cheers. I'm not sure if pictures will be of much use, but I'll take the cover off and have a look. I did replace the vent cover and you can see the bare brick, so I'd assume it's not ducted.

One very important thing I forgot to mention is that I'm looking for easy fixes here. At some point we will either move or get a lot of work done and I can get the place properly insulated, rewired, etc then. So if fixing this is the kind of thing that'll need me to rip out plasterboard and repaint, I'm happy to leave it as is for the time being.

We do use the fireplace, but only once or twice a week over winter. So it'd be nice to be able to put something in front of it the rest of the time. Does that kind of thing exist?

Calahonda52

Cheers, its a very simple fix, you could do one vent at time while waiting for Dan Biggers to kick from the tee.
Re the fireplace, you need to block it, your choice as to how