Garage and new border

Sorry I was bored (waiting for some building supplies for a garden project) and came across your garage conversion thread.
It seems a waste to use it only as a storage area, why not rip out the old door, the side window and get some aluminum framed replacements made to measure.
A lick of paint inside, some laminate wooden flooring, some landscaping and you have a nice outside entertainment area and add value to the property.

 

Hi Loofah

No worries, glad you like it.

 

Aluminium frames are prone to condensation, get some low maintenance uPVC window/doors or some timber ones (that will require constant maintenance).

 

That is interesting about the aluminium frames and condensation and some thing that I have never come across.
At my previous house had quite a few of them and in the 10+ years that I lived there never had the problem.
In the new house, also have loads of them (both sliding doors and windows) and again nothing.
It could of course be that the temperature and humidity differentials between indoors and outdoors here are much less than over in the UK.

 

Did a bit more research and it turns out that aluminium framed doors and windows are not all created equally.
The better ones have what is known as a "thermal break" to effectively isolate the metal from temperature and also air flow between inside and outside which results in condensation.

Quote from Gerkin windows and doors:

"Metal window frames can also cause condensation issues due to the fact that they conduct heat very quickly and will "sweat" or frost up in cold weather. The development of thermal breaks for metal windows was a major break through for solving this condensation problem."

 

We are building an extension to "passive house" standard (if you are still bored you can look that up - you''ll be gone for days reading about that!!). In order to be thermally efficient it has lots of insulation, as you would expect, is incredibly air tight (typical modern housing stock in the UK has 6-8 air changed per hour, current regulations are 5 I think, passive house certification is 0.6 and typically less then 0.3 is achieved - it then has mechanical ventilation using a heat exchanger to reclaim heat from exhaust air). It is triple glazed, and has absolutely no cold bridging from outside-to-in (which is a challenge for the British house construction industry!!) - not only thermal breaks on window frames etc., but no lintels that span the cavity, no metal brick ties, and so on.

A conventional sized 3-bedroom passive house needs 1kw of heat with an external temperature of -10C. So consequently no need to install central heating, and the money saved on boiler and radiators / plumbing is spent on insulation instead, with savings on central heating fuel for the lifetime of the building

 

Hi Kristen

I did glance over some literature concerning building code in the UK and think that your comment "you'll be gone for days reading about that" should be "you'll be gone for years..."

However since this is effectively an "outbuilding", do the same specifications still apply or are they more relaxed as it's technically not part of the main dwelling?
Obviously depending on it's intended new use, it would make sense to make it as thermally efficient as possible.

 

Debatable. I think your first hurdle would be converting a garage into a "habitable dwelling", I expect you need planning permission for that "change of use" as it's called. (Of course there is no need to ask if you don't want to - just cross your fingers that a neighbour doesn't grass you up!)

Assuming you apply for planning permission then perhaps? (I'm guessing) you then would have to bring it up to current building regulations.

But building regs in this country are, IMO, woefully inadequate. My opinion is that we could easily jack up the Regs, and then the new housing stock would be better insulated and need less fuel. Everyone would moan it was expensive, but after a year we would find that Suppliers were producing the materials almost as cheaply as they had done before - once they tooled up for it.

Why do we not REQUIRE that all new houses are triple glazed? I've have heard that, once tooled up for, the cost difference is negligible. And cavity width insulation - my builders cannot believe, and have never seen, cavities as wide as mine. (They joke that we could hide a building inspector, or two!!, in there). Insulation costs peanuts (compared to the cost of bricks and blocks), why would you not make it as wide as possible?

 

Kristen

Very interesting what you say about building regulations in the UK, you should see ours, laughable, but one thing that we do have are exclusions for older buildings that may not be up to current specs and one wants to upgrade.
Of course it makes sense to make them as efficient as possible to save on heating (or in our case cooling) costs going forwards but there is no legal requirement to do so.

As regards getting planning permission, I hear you.
Our "system" is so back logged that most people don't bother applying by default unless it's for a completely new build.

Very valid point you make about insulating cavity widths, however surely there must be a break point where any further increase has no or very little advantage thus no matter how cheap insulation may be, it's just wasting money.

 

Just been doing some reading on the different insulating materials common in the UK here: http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
and I see that one of them is Urea-formaldehyde (UF) foam.
Just yesterday I was watching a home improvement show on the telly where they mentioned that UF foam is actually banned in Canada.