The thing about living in a period house is a mixed bag. Yes we have more than our fair share of nooks and crannies, lots of estate agent woo-ing character but it comes at a price. Heating.
Most of my friends will know I like a nice warm house, somewhere between 22 and 25°C. Not just me but the houseplants enjoy it too.
Trying to achieve that is not too easy but we have insulated the Quirky Museum as best we can. The main issue is not having cavity walls let alone having them insulated. Some rooms have quite high ceilings and then there is the landing which extends further up a little staircase towards the attic rooms – and that’s where some of the heat goes. We have five single glazed Victorian windows at the front and, rather than ripping them out and replacing them with uPVC, we have used some top notch acrylic sheets to form secondary glazing. It works.
A couple of years ago we had a snazzy new central heating system and that seems to work quite well, plus the running cost is okay.
Step in the thermal imaging camera
Those nice people at Octopus Energy have loaned us a thermal imaging camera. It has been quite revealing. In fact it has showed up a number of cold spots (entire walls to be more precise) that have us thinking.
Even under my desk the camera shows a severe cold spot (which my poor feet already knew about) but it was even chillier than I thought. One wall in our bedroom is so cold it shows up like a deep, deep depression on weather forecasts.
Aside from the cold spots, when you look at the building from outside, you can see how much heat is being lost through the walls, especially above the radiators; these are the white patches. The lighter the colour, the warmer it is. We even compared our house with our neighbours and there was a clear difference.
Now the last thing we want to do is ruin a perfectly solid period home with inappropriate work. We certainly don’t want to solve one problem and create another, such as dampness. We definitely don’t want to spoil the look of the house which has stood with its lime mortar breathing deeply as it absorbs a tiny amount of water and then allows it to dry out.
As with most things in life, its a question of finding the right balance.
Related: Octopus thermal camera page on their website