OT Things you would not learn if the weather were not 40something below C....

wrote:


This house has air-pocket construction, but the house I lived in in
Ohio was of the same vintage (1880-1890) and the plaster was laid
right on the bricks. Burrrrrrrrr!

Elizabeth (not convinced those air-pockets do all that much).

My 1895 Ohio house was a frame house, with lath and plaster inside but
no insulation. Fortunately the millwork around doors and windows was
pretty deep, so as we gradually remodeled it, we simply added a layer of
half-inch drywall all through the inside. Worked like a charm. Of
course, back then the blown-in insulation was very new, not very
reliable and had a lot of fumes which we thought would NOT be good for
our small children.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

On Dec 20, 2:44*pm, Gillian Murray wrote:
wrote:
On Dec 19, 5:20 pm, lucretia borgia
wrote:
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:22:03 -0500, Cheryl Isaak
opined:

Some were in a sense, with largish (6 to 8 inch) air pockets. Just not most
homes. And it did depend on where you were. My grandmother spent many moons
researching home building practices while on the local (Millis MA)
historical society. Many it was the better off families that built the homes
with the air pocket insulation. They also used milkweed (kapok) and
newspapers.
C
Seaweed was the insulation of choice around NS. *Unfortunately it
dried and dropped down and was not very effective.

This house has air-pocket construction, but the house I lived in in
Ohio was of the same vintage (1880-1890) and the plaster was laid
right on the bricks. *Burrrrrrrrr!

Elizabeth (not convinced those air-pockets do all that much).

I remember my father explaining to me as a child that they would build a
double brick wall with a space between them. That was for insulation
purposes. There were some metal tie thingies between the two walls,I
remember. Dad was an architect, a chartered surveyor and a civil
engineer; he could design anything...but never never ask him to hammer a
nail into the wall, or change a fuse. Mum had to do that!

Gillian

Yeah, but double brick walls with a pocket would have had much deeper
window and door frames than this house had. I'm positive it was a
single brick wall with the plaster laid right on.

Elizabeth

Gillian Murray wrote:
wrote:
On Dec 19, 5:20 pm, lucretia borgia
wrote:
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:22:03 -0500, Cheryl Isaak
opined:



Some were in a sense, with largish (6 to 8 inch) air pockets. Just
not most
homes. And it did depend on where you were. My grandmother spent
many moons
researching home building practices while on the local (Millis MA)
historical society. Many it was the better off families that built
the homes
with the air pocket insulation. They also used milkweed (kapok) and
newspapers.
C
Seaweed was the insulation of choice around NS. Unfortunately it
dried and dropped down and was not very effective.

This house has air-pocket construction, but the house I lived in in
Ohio was of the same vintage (1880-1890) and the plaster was laid
right on the bricks. Burrrrrrrrr!

Elizabeth (not convinced those air-pockets do all that much).

I remember my father explaining to me as a child that they would build a
double brick wall with a space between them. That was for insulation
purposes. There were some metal tie thingies between the two walls,I
remember. Dad was an architect, a chartered surveyor and a civil
engineer; he could design anything...but never never ask him to hammer a
nail into the wall, or change a fuse. Mum had to do that!

Gillian

I also studied architecture for a year (before I dropped out) and one of
the things I do remember vividly was going onto sites with a builder
every week. The walls at that stage were built, as you say, with a gap
between the two layers of bricks with little metal strips between each
wall. These strips has a kink in them, which would be placed facing
downwards, in order for moisture to drip down and not seep through the
next layer of bricks. This was done mainly on south-facing walls (we're
in the southern hemisphere) an possibly isn't done at all any more, as
standards have dropped. I'm sure it served as insulation too.

Air pockets are better insulation than anything solid, as heat is
transmitted slower through air than through solid material. Probably
the houses insulated with seaweed were done like that deliberately, as
making a small gap is not as easy as no gap at all, and the seaweed
disintegrating would serve that purpose.

We don't have quite the same need for insulation as people in Canada,
but our temperature did go down to -9C this year. And since the time
when a dog jumped through TWO of my windows in two different rooms, and
took out not only the window pane but the frame as well, I've kind of
been living outdoors!! Or it's felt like it.

Catherine