Hi all - Hoping this is the right place to post this.
Second winter I've done in this 1920's stone house, and the condensation in the loft is an issue I need to sort. I could see the ventilation wasn't great when I bought it, but had originally planned to convert the loft so held off doing anything about it. But now that's off the cards so really trying to work out best plan of attack. So a few questions which I would be SUPER grateful to any kind folks here helping me with:
1) VENTILATION: It's a standard square pitched roof space of about 4x5m right into the eaves, and has two roof vents, both on the north side of the roof where the moisture is condensation on the inside on the felt and then dripping down. One of these vents is connected via flexi ducting to the ceiling exhaust fan of t the upstairs bathroom below, which means that there is effectively only one vent. How many vents would tpyically be recommended for a roof of this size and would they generally only go on the coldest side of the roof?
2) DUCTING: Is it good practice for the bathroom fact to be run through the roof? In my mind it probably does remove more steam from the bathroom than running it out of the wall, but running it out of the wall means it never goes through the roof in the first place, and does free up a vent.
3) MOULD: In the photos you can see the mould on the rafters which is building up. It vacuums right off, and I can clean it with bleach but how normal is this given the condensation levels?
4) VAPOUR: It does seem like a lot of moisture to be going into the ceiling in the first place but I can't see any possible other ingress of water other than condensation rising up through the plasterboard ceiling (it's a pretty damp house due to the age and the loft felt really is only wet on the coldest days). Is it normal to lay a vapour barrier sheet down? I'm going to need to lift the chipboard floor panels and add extre battens for height to add more insulation as there isn't enough down at the moment, and at the same time was thinking I could roll out some sheets of the plastic vapour barrier to help prevent the condensation. But I haven't heard of this done before so wondering how smart that is.
Many thanks!
Second winter I've done in this 1920's stone house, and the condensation in the loft is an issue I need to sort. I could see the ventilation wasn't great when I bought it, but had originally planned to convert the loft so held off doing anything about it. But now that's off the cards so really trying to work out best plan of attack. So a few questions which I would be SUPER grateful to any kind folks here helping me with:
1) VENTILATION: It's a standard square pitched roof space of about 4x5m right into the eaves, and has two roof vents, both on the north side of the roof where the moisture is condensation on the inside on the felt and then dripping down. One of these vents is connected via flexi ducting to the ceiling exhaust fan of t the upstairs bathroom below, which means that there is effectively only one vent. How many vents would tpyically be recommended for a roof of this size and would they generally only go on the coldest side of the roof?
2) DUCTING: Is it good practice for the bathroom fact to be run through the roof? In my mind it probably does remove more steam from the bathroom than running it out of the wall, but running it out of the wall means it never goes through the roof in the first place, and does free up a vent.
3) MOULD: In the photos you can see the mould on the rafters which is building up. It vacuums right off, and I can clean it with bleach but how normal is this given the condensation levels?
4) VAPOUR: It does seem like a lot of moisture to be going into the ceiling in the first place but I can't see any possible other ingress of water other than condensation rising up through the plasterboard ceiling (it's a pretty damp house due to the age and the loft felt really is only wet on the coldest days). Is it normal to lay a vapour barrier sheet down? I'm going to need to lift the chipboard floor panels and add extre battens for height to add more insulation as there isn't enough down at the moment, and at the same time was thinking I could roll out some sheets of the plastic vapour barrier to help prevent the condensation. But I haven't heard of this done before so wondering how smart that is.
Many thanks!
