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All you need is an outside wall to knock a hole through. Wall hung balanced flue boilers can be heavy. So lift the boiler before you make the hole, to work out if you can lift it, and the best place to put it for easy access. Try to give yourself room all round to work and when planning the...

Forget about the recommended thickness of fibre glass insulation and think about closed cell insulation where you can get a better easier to fit insulation. The problem with most insulation is that it is badly fitted and the heat is lost through the holes. The best insulation is sprayed or...

Its likely that there was no damp proof membrane. While these things were about and used on many jobs, a lot of amateurs saved money by doing jobs wrong. Likewise self leveling compounds were about but not always used properly.

If you use an extractor fan it will pull all the air and smoke down the chimney into the room. You should seal the fire from the room and provide an alternative fresh air supply to the fire.

Painting the exposed chimney with silicone will stop the rain from entering the brick work and cannot do any harm. However! The usual senario for a damp chimney is. Where the back of the chimney is uninsulated, ie; not in the middle of a house. And where the chimney is the coldest spot in...

Yes, fine, get it working and enjoy! May I mention that 21 million homes have changed over to gas heating as living with gas is a lot easier than living with any other type of fuel. Warn your lady that finding, cutting, storing, drying, carrying, loading wood followed by the constant dust and...

The sensible thing to do is remove the whole chimney. Anything less will be dangerous.

Try some of the aluminum flashing, its soft and can be moulded to shape, it should last a year or two.

I fitted it in a previous home. It worked well but, not perfectly. Its good points. It can be fitted with a four or eight inch gap, between it and the existing glass. Eight inches is the best for sound insulation. The sliding stuff, is good as it can be lifted out for cleaning but, it is not...

Years ago things were done differently! Chimneys were supposed to be parged, often they were not, even up to the war. Gas fires and boilers had few if any rules and if they did they were often ignored. It was normal to fit a piece of aluminum over a fireplace and cut a hole for the burn gas to...

If you do not live in the roof, there is no point in spending good money insulating it. Far better to concentrate on keeping the heat inside your home. With this in mind your best bet is to ignore Government guidelines. Five inches of closed cell insulation saves far more heat than piles of...

Is there any heat in the room? Do you leave the door open? Is the room used?

As you say, the whole wall is loosing heat but, in most places the circulating air keeps the wall warm enough for for the damp to dry out, or go deep into the wall on its way to the outside. The coats are the problem, stopping the air circulation. And letting that part of the wall remain cold...

May I mention that the moment you open the door all the warm air inside disappears into the sky. By the time you have opened the door moved into the porch and closed the door again, you have had some air change. We do not, as a rule live in our porch, we merely pass through (therefore, no...

Where you have only one zone then wherever the thermostat is placed somewhere will be hot and somewhere cold. I have solved this in other homes by installing two or more thermostats in different rooms to work as required as the sun moves round a home. At the moment I have my bungalow...

Use an angle grinder with a diamond tipped cup and grind the paint off. Then wet plaster.

It is probably not a good idea to attempt to squash the existing insulation. If the layer is between the joists then OK to squashing that. If you take a look you will probably find that the insulation has been laid badly, and when you redo it, taking care to fill every hole, most of it will...

Your boiler should be balanced flue and not effect the loft at all, is it? If its not then it needs a dedicated air brick or similar. It still would not effect the loft as far as condensation is concerned. This condensation is, water vapour that originates inside your home. Its cause is...

The point of having a porch is to make an air lock so that you can move in and out of your home without loosing too much warm air. Close one door before opening the other. The last thing it needs is ventilation, ventilation equals loss of heat.

Try using a house brick or two.