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DIY Projects: Insulating the Cathedral Ceiling
Insulating the Cathedral Ceiling We’re currently in the roof, looking over the cathedral ceiling. And what we can see here is the original fibreglass bats laid on black plastic over the cathedral ceiling, and then on top, we’ve actually fitted R2.5 Underfloor...
DIY Projects: Smoke Alarm and Insulated Hot Water Pipes
Smoke Alarm and Insulated Hot Water Pipes Firstly, we decided to put a smoke alarm up here because if there’s a fire that happens to get started in the roof, this is likely to warn us a long time before a smoke alarm in the house would do. The other thing is the hot...
DIY Projects: Insulating the Manhole in your Attic
Insulating the Manhole in the Attic We are just about to go up in the roof to have a look at things up there. But before we do, I’d just like to point out that in our case, we’ve got attic stairs, but nonetheless it’s a manhole. And in your home, you might have a more...
DIY Projects: Testing Ceiling Insulation
Testing Ceiling Insulation Before upgrading the ceiling insulation, we had to decide how much to upgrade it and what to upgrade it with. Without knowing very much about insulation products, we decided to build a controlled heat chamber and we hired a cool room. We...
DIY Projects: Insulating the Top and Bottom Parts of the House
Insulating the Top and Bottom Parts of the House One of the things that we did really early on was to improve the ceiling insulation. Some years later, we did underfloor insulation as well. So basically did improvements on the top and bottom of our home. Now, before...
DIY Projects: Solarventi Controls
Solarventi Outlet This is the outlet for the Solarventi that we first saw on the roof. It’s a simple MDF box that leads from the ceiling down to the floor. The Solarventi has a flexible duct that adapts to the top of the box. So, the warm air comes down here, and...
DIY Projects: Zoning out the Bathrooms
Zoning Out the Bathrooms When we heat our home, it’s a good idea, not to heat areas that you don’t really need to heat. And for us, it’s zoning out the wet areas. It’s the laundry, toilet, and bathrooms. We treat the doors (as in draught-proof them) and keep them...
DIY Projects: Ensuite/Bathroom Improvements
Ensuite/Bathroom Improvements There is a longish story of evolution in our ensuite (bathroom). There’s a little bit of an echo in here because there is no external opening to this room. You can see behind me that we can see straight out the back, but that’s because...
DIY Projects: Draught Proofed Cavity Sliding Door
Draught Proofed Cavity Sliding Door As is usually the case with master bedrooms, there’s often a walk-in robe. In this case, we’ve got a cavity sliding door that slides into an external wall, so almost always causes a draught issue. In this case, we fitted the Draught...
DIY Projects: Improved Air Circulation
Improved Air Circulation I’m standing at the east end of the home. One of the things that we did was to improve the cross-flow ventilation (air circulation) of the home. There used to be a regular awning window, which is really poor for ventilation purposes. We took...
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