Warm, Snug and Cosy

It's been quite a mild winter here so far, with only one really bitter spell, but this last week we have had some persistent 70mph winds - but it's good to be able to say that this house is warm, snug and cosy. The theory of how to eliminate dampness has been amply demonstrated already in our first winter in the house, and we are experiencing the results.

The logic is quite simple really: ingress of water equals dampness, and dampness equals chilly and clammy cold which freezes your fingertips, shivers your spine and generally makes you tired and miserable. By tackling every cause of dampness, from the chimneys on top of the roof down to the ground outside which was higher than the floor levels, we have eliminated the cause of this misery. Now, the expensively heated air in the house isn't being consumed by the latent heat of vaporization (*** see below) of the water in the floors and walls but instead it hangs about and warms us. The radiators are on at a pretty constant setting of about 19 deg C, and if it's a bit chilly indoors we either light a fire or put a jumper on (or both!).

To be honest this drying out has happened sooner than I expected. I knew that I had to sort all the causes of water ingress in whatever form, but I anticipated that the house structure with damp 18 inch thick walls would have taken more than one summer to dry properly. However, they say that 2011 was one of the warmest on record because we had a warm spring and and a warm autumn - the summer wasn't bad but there was no risk of sunstroke here. The result was that the outside air temperature was pretty good for a very long period - just what is required to dry something thoroughly.

Before Christmas I put in some effort to sort out wood to burn, from the copious supply of old rafters, battens and floorboards etc. This effort was largely wasted as we only lit fires on about three days over Christmas! Talking of Christmas, I have mentioned already my two really useful presents: a log splitter and a moisture content meter. The former is still awaiting its first use, as anything I split now can't be used until next winter at the earliest, but the latter has already shown that some bits of wood I thought were dry enough were in fact far too damp - burning damp wood gives poor fires and can damage the stove and the flue. By the same token, the various chemicals used in modern paint and wood preservatives can also damage your fire and, more importantly, yourself. All the wood I mention above is really old and was never treated with anything!

Back to heating and dampness, we made a major step forward with the extension this week: apart from starting the decoration, we have had the first fix plumbing done. Since the house boiler is already working, and the system included supply pipes for the extension, the new radiators have been installed and commissioned. So the extension has heat (what a difference!!) and the remnants of damp plastering are now drying as well (then I can finish the decoration). The floor is next...


*** Water doesn't just turn into water vapour as it warms up (one calorie being the amount of heat required to warm one cc of water by one degree Celsius) - it needs significant extra heat to cause it to become a gas. This is called the latent heat of vaporization. Put it another way, if you warm up water, some of the calories will be used to vaporize it and so will not increase the temperature of anything! So a wet wall requires a lot of heat to dry it, but once dry it will warm up with less heat.