>100 year old Edwardian terrace (masonry) house + thermal upgrade

tungsten

Hi all,
At sale agreed on an 1890 terrace house (terrace of 8 dwellings in a group that has 2 downpipes to terrace front to collect rainwater). Rendered walls and stone construction. walls c.550mm thick.
Evidence of rising damp to living room wall front as a result of rainwater downpipe location to the house front which is gathering water from approx 3-4 houses with an in sufficient drain at present.
If we decide to sign contracts - will deal with providing a sufficient drain and outfall to the public gully on the roadside.
What we would love advice on is energy upgrade.
We want to thermally insulate the inside. we are restricted from doing so on outside as terrace is in an aca and has a group value we cannot interfere with.
We understand that lime render may be an option as well as drylining an option for the walls - we can deal with roof with insulation also.

Question is specifically, how do we dpm/radon proof the ground floor/party wall line and provide a sufficient thermally efficient floor also. We are restricted in a terraced situation.Floor plan as attached which shows layout and party walls.

We have seen diamond wire cut/saw technology for stone that appears 100% rising damp proof. Is this available in Ireland?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbn84hnwkBU


Thanks in advance.

Lumen

The obvious answer is that you most likely don't have a rising damp problem, you have a penetrating damp problem caused by some combination of water getting in and the wall not drying out properly.

Slicing up your load bearing walls with a saw seems like a drastic over-reaction. The house almost certainly didn't have a damp problem when it was built, it's had some combination of inadequate or inappropriate maintenance or alterations like replacing lime render with cement render or closing off vents.

Several options for sympathetic energy-efficiency upgrades once the root problems have been addressed with trade-offs in terms of materials and labour cost vs maximizing space. Maybe get advice from engineer/architect with experience of conversation projects.

Bdjsjsjs

tungsten wrote: »

Hi all,
At sale agreed on an 1890 terrace house (terrace of 8 dwellings in a group that has 2 downpipes to terrace front to collect rainwater). Rendered walls and stone construction. walls c.550mm thick.
Evidence of rising damp to living room wall front as a result of rainwater downpipe location to the house front which is gathering water from approx 3-4 houses with an in sufficient drain at present.
If we decide to sign contracts - will deal with providing a sufficient drain and outfall to the public gully on the roadside.
What we would love advice on is energy upgrade.
We want to thermally insulate the inside. we are restricted from doing so on outside as terrace is in an aca and has a group value we cannot interfere with.
We understand that lime render may be an option as well as drylining an option for the walls - we can deal with roof with insulation also.

Question is specifically, how do we dpm/radon proof the ground floor/party wall line and provide a sufficient thermally efficient floor also. We are restricted in a terraced situation.Floor plan as attached which shows layout and party walls.

We have seen diamond wire cut/saw technology for stone that appears 100% rising damp proof. Is this available in Ireland?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbn84hnwkBU


Thanks in advance.

Lime hemp plaster is a way of insulating walls that would be very good for older structures like this case, if the gained u value is not enough perhaps a form of dry walling might be useful. If space is highly valuable perhaps spacetherm could be used to drywall. For floors google insulating suspended floors.


One important piece of advice I would give is that it is vastly better to have modest insulation installed extremely well than excellent insulation installed average so be very choosy with installers.

Idbatterim

Eliminating draughts and properly insulating the attic are the low hanging fruit!

tungsten

Thanks everyone for responses - will keep you updated on approach