Okay, so let me preface this by saying, sometimes I’m a dumbass.
So, when we were doing the house, I think we considered insulating under the floor. I certainly vaguely thought about it, but with the exception of the last house, haven’t really thought of the floor as a place of great cold. Which is dumb, because when I think about it, the floor has always been a cold place. It’s just, when I was a kid, I’d sit on the floor with my back against the radiators (for USian readers, remember, most houses in the UK are heated by hot-water radiators, not by forced air). I didn’t really think about the floor, anyhow.
Our last house was on the chilly side in the lounge because, I assumed, I’d put the radiator on the wall away from the window. This is because it was a hideous, hideous experience to grovel around under the floor. And also, because it saved me a chunk of money not to do that. And also, it saved me taking up another floor.
Anyway, for many reasons I decided not to bother. ISTR that I didn’t bother in the bedroom either, for the same reasons, but the bedroom was never quite so cold. Clueful readers will realise that since I overspec’d the radiators for the rooms, the rooms should have been warm anyway, unless, perhaps (dumbass) there was cold air pouring in from somewhere. Doh. Anyhow, in this house, the radiators were spec’d by the plumbers (with the exception of the bathroom one, where they told us the minimum and we picked one that would do, and the kitchen where we’re a little underspec, but it’s the kitchen, and I tend to think of kitchens being somewhere that you cook, and so it warms up while you cook, and lo, it does’t matter if there is marginally less heating in there than you might ordinarily want).
And yet, it’s been cold here. Cool, anyway. Not freezing, but never terribly warm, and the heating’s been working it’s ass off – running much of the day – trying to keep up with the warming the house.
And every so often, I’ve looked at the gaps under the skirting (baseboards) and thought I should seal them. Then yesterday I got around to submitting the meter readings for our gas and electricity bill.
We use 100% clean electricity. Gas – not so much. It’s gas. It comes mostly from the North Sea. So, I still have guilt about gas. I have guilt about clean electric, too, because of things like wind turbines near wibble’s house, but our electricity usage isn’t too much of a problem. However, the gas bill came as a teeensy bit of a shock. Not an unpayable, dear god what have we done size shock. No. But a ‘oh arse, I really should have fixed that’ type shock.
So, in the last day, the inch wide gap betwixt floor and wall in the hall, where the was no skirting board – fixed. Taped over and then new skirting cut, fitted, and sealed against the floor and the wall. The lounge? Today I cleared each wall (‘cept the piano wall), taped it, sealed it, and put stuff back. And whilst I was doing it I was horrified – because I don’t spend that much time grovelling in the corners of the room – and it was like lying in a gentle cold breeze of fresh, cool, air. All that energy we were pumping in to the room was being gently wafted back out of the room. Arse.
There’s still one wall to do, which is sitting there mocking me. I’ve done the corridor – at least, the bits of the corridor outside the hall cupboard, and that too was a chill refreshment. I need to run the network cable up and then I can seal behind the skirting too (because where the ring main runs down the wall, there’s no plaster at the moment). And while I’ve been grovelling I’ve been thinking about insulating under the floorboards. I had not seen how cheap the (60% recycled glass) rockwool is. I hate rockwool, incidentally. I think it’s awful, awful stuff. But 12 quid would essentially insulate the underside of the house.
The problem is, I can insulate the main body of the kitchen (but not either side of the fireplace, I think); and the hall, that I can do, but I can’t insulate under the lounge without taking out some bricks to make a passageway into the lounge. And I imagine that they’d have done that rather than cut holes in the floor before now, but they cut holes in the floor rather than do that… so I assume there’s a reason for not doing so. I’m still pondering it, it’s not likely to happen for a few weeks anyway, but now as I hear the drone of the fan-assisted kitchen heating I think ‘should we not be doing that’. Of course, doing it before we had the all the floors down, say, whilst they were reflooring the kitchen? That would have been a clever plan. At least dropping the stuff down there so I don’t have to drop down under the stairs, drag it to the front of the house, then drag it back down the length of the corridor to get to the point where it splits off to the kitchen, dining area, and back room. Feh.
