The house as it was
Built in 1874 as the second of a row of eight red-brick Coastguard cottages on the coast: thick walls, a slate roof, and gas for heating and hot water. Every other story here describes a change to this house.
A Coastguard cottage from 1874
The house was built in 1874 as one of eight red-brick cottages for the Coastguard, in a coastal town. Counting from the left, it is the second. It has two main storeys under a pitched slate roof, a narrow front with white-painted surrounds and brick details, and a chimney stack with several pots, shared with its neighbour. An original wrought-iron downpipe still runs down the front. The single-storey bathroom extension at the back was added later.
How it is built
The external walls are about 0.45 m thick. The homeowner understands the house to be an early example of cavity-wall construction, but nobody has inspected the cavity, so its width, what the walls are made of inside and whether they hold any insulation are all unknown. The house stands on the coast, in humid air.
Where the retrofit starts
Before the retrofit measures described here, a gas combi boiler heated the house and made its hot water, and a gas oven did the cooking. A log burner in the living room is still there, though it is hardly ever lit. The loft was storage space and already had some insulation, which was later topped up; nothing is recorded about insulation under the floor before the work in 2023. The rear extension was single-skin and the coldest, dampest room in the house. The stories that follow show what was done.
Limitations
- The date and the history are the homeowner's account.
- The walls, the cavity and the roof structure have not been inspected, so nothing is claimed about their insulation or condition.
- The model is an approximate reconstruction from photographs and approximate measurements, not a survey.