Airtight homes.

[Ricard with an H]

I'm recently bombarded with professional encouragement to promote airtight homes when most of my working years were to do with the exact opposite though that opposite needed to be controlled.

I just made a social visit to the farmhouse, the farmhouse would have been the centre of everything around 1850 Onwards and we were once attached to that farmhouse. We are more new build if you accept modern as improvement, the farmhouse on the other hand resorts to towels on the window cills as normal during winter. They also fill and tape every place fresh air might get into the building.

I spent my early years learning about ventilation amongst other things, I also spent a lot of time as a consultant going to people's homes and explaining the consequences of poor ventilation when they already had some of those consequences. Modern roofs are built better these days, they have ventilated spaces.

My visit to the farmhouse showed water dripping down the glass and flooding the cills because of warm/moist internal air met cold glazing, the moist air was coming from the kitchen and the washing drying in another room. All the doors and windows are sealed so whilst they didn't use the hob fan it wouldn't have worked well with nothing coming into the building.

Don't get suckered into hermetically sealing your home. An output fan needs a positive and negative to get rid of farts from the toilet so open a window.

[Monika]

It beats me how people can live in an almost airtight house! All our upstairs windows are open one small crack all the time and the bedroom windows wide open all night, unless it is really pelting down or very windy. The downstairs gets a good blasting through every morning and the kitchen window is mostly left ajar all day. If I have to sleep in a room where you can't open the window (like in some hotels, even with air conditioning) I feel really suffocated. I would rather be cold than airless!

And, as you say, Richard, where does all the natural condensation go in an airtight house?

[peter]

As a fan of "Holmes on Homes", satellite tv program featuring campaigning Canadian builder Mike Holmes I note from that the well insulated and well sealed Canadian house's worst enemy is mould, which they treat as we treat ashestos.

Bear in mind how cold the Canadian winter is.

Mikes do it right and minimum code is not enough approach, stresses ventilation of lofts and exhausting of wet air.
They do have an advantage in that tye normsl heating ventillation and conditioning (HVAC) is blown air and can readily incorporate humidity control. Substitue the furnace with rows of computer racks and the technology is data centre stuff, though data centre fans and air speeds and a hit high and noisy.

[Catherine]

Peter I loved to watch Holmes on Homes.

[Elaine]

I have always been a fresh air fiend, windows open, even during the winter months and like Monika's, the house gets a good blast of fresh air every morning, with the patio door open.
Unfortunately, all this came to a stop when me and Husband got married and moved into this house 10 years ago. He is the complete opposite to me regarding open windows and goes around noisily closing any window which I have left open a titchy bit, grumbling about the "bloody draught".
It drives me daft.... I hate all the windows being closed. He even closes the bathroom window and door when he has a bath or shower, resulting in everything dripping with condensation in there. grrrrrrr.

Even in the summer, he tries to get away with closing windows at night....

I wonder if a Divorce would be granted on the grounds of being deprived of open windows??

[Ricard with an H]

I,m so happy I didn't meet with pages of disapproval, where we live the weather is an issue and there are times we cannot have open windows though we do have ways of venting the products of two people. I have to tape the keyholes up on doors that are rarely used during winter because they fill up with sand, grit and critters.

My loft hatch which is in the area of a gallery that was used to store feed for the cows is ventilated with heavy duty insect proof netting-grid, this vents the whole barn with help of windows that have the seal strips removed. It can be very noisy on windy nights but barn is kept fresh rather than stinking of whatever we had for dinner the day before.

Our often cause for disagreement is I like a warm bed in a cold and well ventilated room, this never became an issue because I'm alone five days a week.

The last few days of cold weather with clear skies means I open doors and windows, however, I always have the problem of birds flying in. During summer it's the swallows and winters it's blue tits. They fly around then can't find an escape and poop everywhere. I often wondered if this is down to generations of birds nesting in the barn when it was a milking parkour, is this possible ?

[retropants]

i'm a windows open kinda girl too. I hate closed up tight houses, can't breathe. DH is OK with it, within reason, but we live on a noisy road, so sometimes it gets a bit much with all the lorries going past at night. I never sleep in a room with closed widows, except for last night, as we had the windows cleaned yesterday, and I forgot to open the bedroom one. We overslept as it was so quiet! I love the breeze blowing through in the summer.
we have a problem at the moment, as our heating isn't working, and the windows are dripping each morning, even with plenty open to ventilate.

[Ricard with an H]

Has it been very cold ? Though if you're single glazing any temperature difference between outside and inside will give you condensation. The answer is dehumidifiers, regardless of what the manufacturers claim most family sized homes are better with two or even three of the portable type than a large one that often does the job in one half of the home. Problem is, with a dehumidifier running you have to close all your windows and doors though you are allowed to open them.

I have two running right now and whilst we don't have much of a condensation problem the older parts of the barn do let dampness through the tanked walls. I find the barn heats up more quickly with dehumidifiers doing their job.

Right now my windows and doors are open though not in the room with one dehumidifier running, they are open because the sun is shining and I want than clean cold air no matter how cold. During winter the doors and windows often have to be closed though we get plenty of opportunities to open them.

A lot of people do not have a big enough fan in their bathroom/shower room, the buildings-standards type 4 inch are the minimum. Fit a 4 inch centrifugal instead of an axial fan and see the difference makes. Also the kitchen is often not ventilated enough and then people dry washing indoors and wonder why they get condensation. With a dehumidifier the washing can go in a closed off room and it'll be dry in the morning without condensation.

[Primrose]

I'm another fan of ventilation. We have double glazing. Our ventilation slots are permanently open whatever the weather, we always sleep with a window open and bathrooms are always ventilated after use . I think it's much easier to pick up colds and other infections from rooms where the sir is never changed..

[Motherwoman]

I draw the line at curtains sticking out into the room at 45 degs though...
Having a house heated by a wood range and a log burner keeps the air flowing. The log burner does not go up through a register plate in the very large chimney but up a metal tube so there's always air flowing around it. This also prevents a build up of heat in a sealed chimney. Did you know that thatch fires usually start by sooty deposits on the inside of the chimney getting hot enough to start glowing and then it creeps through old pointing to start the fire on the underside of the thatch? This is why you get a selection of fires in thatched properties around Christmas as people keep their log burners burning brightly and the chimney doesn't get a chance to cool. After all the stuff on top is pretty wet by this point in the year.
And don't use coal on a log burner it will make the pipe too hot, logs dried down to between 10 and 20% moisture content will give plenty of heat. Green logs will just cause tar build up, another fire risk. We have magnetic stove pipe thermometers which have an ideal burn section on them to guide you on how hot your exit pipes should be.

Don't think we've researched this or anything!

MW

[Ricard with an H]

I think it's much easier to pick up colds and other infections from rooms where the sir is never changed..

This is very interesting, I rarely get colds, respiritary tract infections of any kind though I did get Man-Flue twice in twenty years. I assume Man-Flue to be what females call a cold, they carry on regardless to spread their germs around whilst men retire to the sick bed moaning and groaning as if close to death.

I never figured out if my outdoors lifestyle contributed or that I had built up immunities to most bugs.

The two times I was poorly I needed help from neighbors just to get me a cup of tea but I have never taken antibiotics during my adult years, maybe that's it. Last week my partner had to see doctor for UTI, first response from doctor was antibiotics then two days later the test result came back as negative. Why not wait for the test results, then prescribe.

Interesting what mother woman has to say about wood stoves and ventilation, our stove pipe doesn't go through a chimney, half the verticle length is black single wall until it reaches the vaulted ceiling then it's twin-wall through the ceiling and roof. Presumably this is the same as hers. We never have a shouldering fire with wood, it's either burning or it isn't though I must get one of those magnetic thermometers, particularly when your lighting a fire it's useful to have a stove pipe nice and hot before you place the big stuff on. I f you don't get that right you get thermosyphon in the flue pipe and blow-back.

So, a warm home is one that is heated regularly so the structure retains that heat though how long the retention depends on the structure. If you open windows you let out some warm stinky and often bug-infested air that can soon be replaced by warm fresh air so please don't get suckered into this recent drive to hermetically seal your home against any fresh air, it doesn't have to be draught though the odd draught won't hurt if you keep the place warm and dry.

Warm and dry means ventilation.

[Motherwoman]

I've never understood the filling in of wall cavities. The gap is there for a reason. My parents had it done about 15 years ago in their 50's bungalow with the promise that it would solve damp and mildew problems on the north wall, just gave them more at ceiling height...

I seem (touch wood) to be fairly free from bugs and colds so far and seeing as I'm in and out of schools with the paid job that's good going. Somebody told me that there are only so many variations of colds and flu in the environment and at our age we've had most of them. Like you Richard I avoid antibiotics or any pills if at all possible.

MW

[oldherbaceous]

I hate pills and tablets too, i must admit i felt i had lost my self discipline when i took some paracetamol after extracting one of my own wisdom teeth.

I like my bedroom window open nearly all year...i always live in hope...

[Motherwoman]

Expecting a lady vampire in a diaphanous nightgown OH?

[Ricard with an H]

I like my bedroom window open nearly all year...i always live in hope...

Anyone will do Eh ?