Insulation.

June has been a pretty slow month … progress has been dominated by insulation and plasterboard.

First fix electrics and plumbing are complete. The roof and walls are being insulated and plasterboarded. Internally, the old stone barn is being lost behind a new structure of wood, plasterboard, insulating panels and rock wool. It feels like we’re building a boat within and completing filling and old stone barn.

This stage of development throws up some interesting contrasts, junctions between stone walling, old wooden beams, new oak beams, plasterboard and block work. There’s a balance between old and new, ancient and modern that we need to play with and get correct – in doing so we’ll make the most of the building and make it an attractive place to live. If we get it wrong then we’ll have created a tacky, aesthetically confusing and uncomfortable anachronism.

something old, something new…

The windows and doors are due in July – exciting times.

Expanded Polystyrene insulation is made from small beads of polystyrene that are heated to expand them. To create boards, the beads are heated further to fuse the beads together. Boards are typical used in walls, roofs and floors. Polystyrene beads can be used as lose cavity fill in masonry walls.

Description
Lose or in boards we’re all familiar with the white, squashy polystyrene balls that form the basis of this type of insulation.

Features

• Manufactured from petrochemicals so not sustainable and toxic when burnt.
• High embodied energy.
• Cheap.
• Moisture tolerant and relatively durable.
• Versatile and relatively easy to fit.

Performance
Typically has a thermal conductivity or K value in the range of 0.032 – 0.040 W/m.K. (Watts per meter Kelvin ~ lower value is a better result)

Cost
At 100mm thickness cost should be between £4 & £5 a square metre.

last weekend’s raking out

In what seems to be an annual event, I’ve restarted repointing the exterior of the barn.

When working with lime you have to take a break over the cold, wet winter months – it’s taken me this long to get restarted.

This time, I’ve taken a more scientific approach and attempted to work out how longs it’s going to take.

Last weekend I managed to hack / rake out the old pointing from an area 180cm by 190cm = 3.42m2…that took me just around 3.5 hours, so my hacking out rate = 1 square meter per hour.

I reckon my repointing is slightly quicker – perhaps 45 minutes a square meter. Add to that preparation of the fresh lime mortar taking one hour for every five hours pointing and final cutting back and tidying up of 15 minutes a square meter.

With a total of around 70m2 to complete that works out as:

hacking out rate = 1 hour x 70m2 = 70 hours
repointing = 45 minutes x 70m2 = 52.5 hours
mortar preparation = 52.5 hours / 5 = 10.5 hours
finishing = 70m2 * 15 minutes = 17.5 hours
Total = 150.5 hours

Better stop writing about it and get on with it…