Maintenance Matters
Rhyd-y-car Terrace in St Fagans Museum of Welsh Life For those, who have not been to St Fagans in Cardiff, it is worth the trip. Great place and an ideal way to start to understand how buildings have changed over …
Tag: refurbishment
Limewashing the west facing wall
Limewash picture from Heritage Directory I have spent a lovely few hours yesterday painting the rear of my house using some limewash. I made the limewash using some mature lime putty mixed up with water. The mix is around 60:40 …
What is the Whole House Approach?
A house is a structure embracing complex systems, embodied history and knowledge, not to mention humans! We tend to think of houses as being simple structures that provide shelter, security and a place to call home. However, they are in …
Community Work with Renew Wales
Saron Chapel in Treoes Eco Home Centre is a Rounded Developments Enterprises project. RDE is a not-for-profit organisation that does work with other partners in Wales and one of our main ones is Renew Wales (see www.renewwales.org.uk). Renew Wales is …
Brick face failure
This is quite common to see bricks suffering from old age (and occasionally poor pointing) This is the type of wall that is commonly rendered over (using cement) because the bricks have lost their faces and hence are much more …
Forget Energy Efficiency think Health!
Readers of this blog will know my views on lots of the energy driven ‘improvements’ that we are blindly doing in the UK at the moment. We are making so many mistakes due to the fact that we are using …
Getting solid walls to meet Building Regs
Building Regulations in the UK have been interpreted for years as demanding that refurbished walls need to meet a U value of 0.3. Products have therefore been designed using BR443 and BS5250:2011 to comply with this. Unfortunately, BS5250:2011 states that …
Passive House Retrofit
From Bere Architects Passiv Haus is an excellent German energy standard for building new homes. It is a system that relies on making houses really airtight and insulating. Insolation then provides much of the heat energy for the house. Fresh …
Eco Home Centre community work
Some of the more observant of you might have seen that we are a not for profit and that we aim to assist groups and people in Wales to make their buildings more sustainable. Well I thought that it might …
Where has that damp smell gone?
No need for these now! The was always a certain smell when we came back home. That slight dusky smell that reminds you that there was damp in the house. Well, I am glad to say that when we returned …