Insulating a house on stilts? Ideas?

[ABCwarrior]

I dug out the plans for the house and all they say regarding the floor is:

"295 JJi Joist on joist hangers with 22mm chipboard floor over 200mm warmcell insulation on 9mm ply"

We've found out that the ORIGINAL plans had all the water/heating pipework above floor level and to save costs on the build as the budget spiralled out of control they decided to put all the services within the floor space to save a few quid
Just done a search on "warmcell" and what I've found is not what is in the floor space- what is in there is that itchy mineral wool stuff, no doubt another cost cutting exercise at our expense...
Having just a 200mm gap below the floor is crazy for any future maintainance. But it has given me an idea for a cost effective place to store my sea kayak- just need to excavate 6m by 0.5m wide only and put some old carpet below the house to slide it in. so just 30cm deep needs to come out to give me the height.
Think I will go ahead with the ply though...
Modern building eh?

 

[mointainwalker]

Warmcell has same insualtion properties as the glass-wool. just somewhat "greener" being recycled paper.

 

[ABCwarrior]

Oh- cheers for that! Warmcell would probably fill the voids better though than sheeted wool?

 

[ABCwarrior]

Well it's been down to -17c and the cold supply to the kitchen froze. Not as bad as last years fiasco but not letting this go at the architects advice we received for the time being to "run a tap when it's forecast for below -10c"-this is not a long term solution by any means.
Who can you take complaints over competency to in this situation?
As far as I can see the DDA compliant ramp into the front door(lethal when icy) leads to a threshold 55mm above FFL. Is the DDA maxiimum permissible not 15mm? If so it doesn't say much for the local Building Control who must have signed it off!!?

 

[ABCwarrior]

Just found a site that says private homes are exempt?

 

[mointainwalker]

Why has it frozen ? Passing through unheated voids or lack of insulation ?

I can imagine that one piece of modern jargon that may help you is "fit for purpose"

If your plans tell you what expected lowest temp house was planned for, then you can obviously use this .

Obviously if it was even lower than - 17 C, then you can show it is not built correctly and claim correction.

If on the other hand it is less than - 17C, then you need to do some investigation of local weather records to see if their expected minimum was reasonable.

Did your neighbours get their guttering repaired ? I ask, because , obviously if this is going to be another severe winter as it is shaping up to be , then the problems you experienced may be visited on them too.
The fact that they have already been shown to be sloppy and incompetent with the guttering is already a point in your favour

 

[ABCwarrior]

It's frozen because the floor is so leaky and the house is on mini stilts. There probably is insufficient insulation too given the crap we have discovered in the last 18 months. Two of the neighbours are playing right into their hands by running taps as a preventative measure so they don't even know if their work has been a success. Another neighbour and us found out the hard way the remedial works had failed- but then what if in the future it would pay to have our water useage metered? I calcuated last winter that running the cold taps at a trickle was using something like 5000 litres a day! I also refuse to run out my hot(or even warm) water. They probably will have to build a block wall under the house around the perimeter and this is what I'm going to push for.
The architect is a typical climate change propaganda believing idiot, who bleats on about carbon emissions but is too stupid to design a house in the scottish highlands thinking all our winters will be warm because a load of university goons have manipulated data to sut the governments carbon tax agenda to save their own funding from being slashed!

None of the neighbours have had anything off them regarding the gutters. I'm leaving mine til spring then will photograph the damage and email them to Lindab and the fanny who advises 800mm centres, then I'm going to strip and refit them at 450-500mm centres!

 

[mointainwalker]

Have just re-read your post back in September about the floor-void/warmcel etc .

can you detail the actual construction of what you have ( floor) as not sure I am clear about it.

 

[ABCwarrior]

Its box flooring 300mm deep done in sections. On tuesday night we lost the shower(H/C), the kitchen Hot tap, and wen I got home on Wed the toilet flushed with a slush coming out of it. The kitchen came back on today but still no shower. A bloke I met recently who moved to the area and does property maintenance came around for a look today- his advice was to forget the exterior for now, and simply rip off some of the plasterboard, cut all the pipes that go under the floor and re plumb the whole lot above the floor level, surface mounted where needs be. Seems so simple I ouldn't see the woods for the trees. Would be a case of cutting the HW and connecting the kitchen/toilet sink/shower, and at the moment the cold supply comes in and is T branched with one side disappearing under the cold floor, just do the same with that and keep the connections 50cm above the floor and pack below and around it all with insulation AFTER thoroughgly insulating every visible pipe. I'm happy with surface mounting for simplicity and ease of installation without too much disruption.
I've emailed the goons concerned though as they should be bearing the costs.
A long winter ahead though I'm tempted to just go ahead and get on with it.

 

[ABCwarrior]

It's sorted- resorted to getting a plumber I know to re-route all the plumbing, only needed a small biit of plasterboard removed, now all pipes above floor level, all leaky air gaps plugged.

Hopefully that's it with this fiasco of a house, will be chasing up builder/seller/architect, but even if they don't stump up it's the best £200 I've spent. He even looked at the anti freeze in the radiators. There isn't any, there is now. No wonder the downstairs ones were freezing. Some absolute pillock put in Sentinel X100 inhibitor in it, which isn't an antifreeze it's a corrosion inhibitor.....