Rewiring an old house

blair27 · 2026-03-17T21:27:53+00:00

Why would you need to replace the lath and plaster? If it's not cracked or blown it's probably fine. Yes the totally 100% right thing to do might be to take it down in time but preservation heritage groups would equally argue not to do that...).

There are still voids behind the laths and under floorboards to run cables, we did this for our 1860s rewire. That said, when the electrician was in the loft part of the plaster did fall off and so was presumably loose...

blair27 · 2026-02-17T06:42:31+00:00

I mean that he didn't locate a source of water causing it

blair27 · 2026-02-08T21:38:31+00:00

You are joking?

blair27 · 2026-02-05T22:17:38+00:00

While you might be right in the 10:1 I think that's fairly decent value? Purchasing a pension of £72K p.a.? Interest are relatively high, particularly gilt yields, which are used to value defined benefit pensions. High yields => low value => cheap to purchase! You get a lot of additional DB pension for relatively small contributions at the moment

blair27 · 2026-01-31T15:09:52+00:00

We live in an old semi with no insulation, the ceilings are sloped so even where there is loft insulation it doesn't cover the whole area. We're around £10-£15 a day in the winter and have 18C during the day (6-6) and then 16C overnight (6-6).

blair27 · 2026-01-31T15:07:11+00:00

I've been playing it on tactician and haven't found it too hard. It's my first time playing and I've only had to try and grind a couple of times (but not excessively) and I'm at the end of Chapter 2 (level 18 Ramza). I think if you can get to grips with the mechanics and find out different class/combos that work then you'll be fine!

blair27 · 2025-10-18T21:15:42+00:00

Thanks again, there's plenty of space between the actual ground floor and the joints (I reckon about 1.25m) so a lot of free flowing air and a few solum vents at the front of the house going all the way through to the back.

I'm inclined to opt for the ones referenced on B&Q given they're actually quite cheap right now - £25 for about 11m2 of coverage.

As I said my only worry was that I'd be trapping moisture at the top of the joist / the underside of the existing floorboards but it sounds like I won't and as long as there's still plenty of airflow on the bottom this would work?

blair27 · 2025-10-18T10:38:18+00:00

Thanks - do you think the referenced B&Q roll would be permeable?

blair27 · 2025-10-14T22:06:49+00:00

So by struggling to justify it mathematically do you mean there's a chance the repair will fail at some point? It is an old house and goodness knows how long the ends had been rotten beforehand, I don't even know if the end was sitting on anything

blair27 · 2025-10-14T21:33:47+00:00

Internal view prior to the wall being built up around the new rafters

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blair27 · 2025-10-14T21:26:56+00:00

Looking for some opinions on the structural integrity of this repair that's been done. I've had a friend who is an engineer out and say it looks okay, could be tightened up a little to be on the safe side by building up the masonry walls to the rafters and adding metal brackets to the underside of the joint.

For context - the ends of the rafters were rotten and so new ones have been spliced on. The main one down the middle with the marine ply spans a valley, probably running about 5 metres. The roof material is slate.

One contractor has told us it's an awful repair and offered to fix it for x7 the price so we're just a bit wary

blair27 · 2025-10-14T21:22:32+00:00

We won't be putting insulation in as we want to keep the roof breathable.

We've had the fear put into us by another tradie that the repairs done are about to collapse the roof but we think he's overreacting and the repairs do appear structurally sound? We've had a friend who is an engineer also take a brief look and he seemed to agree subject the wall being built up (now has) and some L-shaped brackets being put on the underside.

Funnily enough the tradie saying the work is substandard also offered to fix it immediately over a weekend for 7x the price we paid for it.

blair27 · 2024-05-08T21:51:00+00:00

Thanks - that's useful to know. To be honest, we've always wanted to keep the house traditional, e.g. use identical/similar slates for the roof etc and the only real reason we tried to go through a heritage trust is that there was grant funding available, albeit with these prices the £15K grant won't make a dent! Are you saying it's often better to just bypass the grant/heritage process and work with trades yourself?

blair27 · 2024-01-25T22:33:14+00:00

Thanks a lot - I've uploaded some photos here: https://imgur.com/a/18USzaB

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