Unavoidable Design Changes
Like a lot of pre-war, mid-terraced properties our retrofit has a side passage way. I had hoped to improve dramatically the thermal performance of the side wall using a combination of external cladding (50mm phenolic foam) plus dry-lining. Unfortunately, I’ve now discovered that this is the only means of access to several other properties and therefore as we need to maintain current access levels cladding here will not be possible.
The objective was to get down to a U value of 0.20 W/m2K using this method. However, I’ve re-calculated that if the dry-lining thickness is increased to 82.5mm (using Kingspan K17) a U value of around 0.24 W/m2K should be possible. On the downside it will involve sacrificing more floor space then planned (although this will be compensated to some degree by removing the chimney breast in the front lounge and relocating the gas and electricity meters so they are outside of the property).
This still leaves the kitchen extension where dry-lining the external passage solid wall would not be cost effective as to do so would require us ripping out a perfectly good kitchen that was fitted only a few years ago. A problem that may have to wait until the kitchen is refurbished again….
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