Stone 1800s house - pros and cons

[Tilyoufindyourdream]

Have seen a lovely house we like, early to mid 1800s with stone walls. EPC says no insulation in/on walls. Loft is insulated.

Love the house but just concerned about the walls and if it will be cold, lose lots of heat, etc. Also anything else we need to be mindful of when (hopefully) buying an old house?

Only as a young child but we then had secondary glazing put in. And as a child I didn’t really care about being cold and didn’t have to consider heating bills!

Need to look into under floor insulation once we know more about the current flooring. Like you, I guess we could also do this in stages and start with rooms like the living room and bedrooms used regularly.

Wow, not less than 17 degrees is great! It’s def been colder than that in our current home.
Seems like insulation, thick curtains, carpets and shutters are the way forward.

Mine was built in 1880 and never gets really cold- I find the key is never letting it get too cold as once’s the walls are heated up it seems to retain them. I also have a large aga which is on for about 9 months of the year and really helps. Also have multi fuel stove lit most nights. Be prepared for higher heating costs.

Also have mostly carpets and shutters- but I don’t like it too dark so don’t close them unless really cold.

We have a stone farmhouse in Cornwall. We've been here over 20 years but have just spent a lot of money doing a big refurb.

It did used to get quite cold in winter, but it was not due to the walls so much but from draughty doors and windows. We have all new double glazed windows, have increased the draught proofing of the external doors and have put in new radiators, the difference it made last winter was massive.

We have one open fireplace but it has a modern Jetmaster fireplace fitted so it's either lit or closed.

We have slate floors all through the ground floor, so they weren't being moved. We put new insulation in the loft but most of the walls aren't insulated. Where we had a lot of redecorating we did add some layers of insulation but only in the more modern extension, which is brick, and some internal walls.

We have a mesh system for wifi (very important as there is no mobile signal here) and don't have any problems.

Always let old houses breathe so don’t insulate them to death.
Depending on how thick the walls are they will be cool in the summer and keep the warm in the the winter.
Use thick curtains for windows and doors. Or shutters.
Insulate the roof but remember to maintain ventilation.
Watch out when using anything of glue / non breathable origin on the walls ie wallpaper paste, gloss paint etc. They prevent the walls from breathing and you can end up with bubbling paint and paper coming away. ( always chose a breathable paint )

Old properties are difficult to evaluate for an epc because of the unknown construction but you shouldn’t let that worry you.

Bubbling around window cills, if you mean on the finish of the wall ( without a pic I’d say ) that’s more than likely just localised water ingress or use of non breathable finish. Just a case of resealing or using the correct materials.

You can buy a damp meter from B&Q and check all the external walls (internally ) up to 1metre above floor level for damp. Anything showing 10 or more on the meter could mean there’s a problem. There won’t be a dpc ( unless recent owners have put one in ) but ours doesn’t have one ( 14th century property ) and we don’t have problems so it not a forgone conclusion that you will either.

Re flooring.
If they are timber floors, like most properties of your era, you will have beams set into the solid walls. The timber flooring will sit above the existing dirt surface underneath. Any tiled surfaces will also sit above a void.

Recommend looking at SPAB recommendations to preserve lovely old buildings.

Pro: finding random stuff in bizarre places. Repainting a box thing in the hallway I realised there were screws in it. Curiously meant I unscrewed them and found three old glass photo frames (no photos) in them.

Pro: Found (under about 120 years of wallpaper paste) a load of drawings on the lime plaster. Some young person doodles I think, and a massive pair of scissors drawn and signed by the decorator. Wish it had been dated, the script was beautiful.

Con: cccolllld in winter. Reynauds hasn't helped. A living room wood burner has.

Maybe coaster Scotland doesn't have a lot of spiders but they've not been an issue. Neither have ghosts but my parents 1600s house has creep factor.

My parents have a stone cottage from around 1810. It can get cold in the kitchen at times but they have a wood burner in the living room which keeps that room pretty warm, and an electric blanket in bed. My mum also keeps a fluffy blanket on the sofa which she usually gets under when watching tv etc (dad doesn't feel the cold so much). Also as mentioned by PP once it is warmed up it tends to retain the heat.

It's a really lovely house otherwise and they've been very happy there for over a decade.

We weren't on mains gas so had oil.

Interesting things

A ghost.

In the dry stone walls which fell down occasionally, old glass bottles and sheep heads.

A dowsing diviner which worked.

A druid head carved from limestone

Blimey.
Lucky you.
Id love a ghost.
All our archaeologists found was a pet turkey buried out in the front yard, some roman coins pottery etc. Nothing really juicy though.

Our property dates 1329 with undercroft from before 1066. I was at least hoping for some Saxon treasure😔

Our Walls are about a foot deep solid. We have had to take the walls right back to stone (We have lathe and plaster) and insulate with King span boards. Floors have had insulation put under them too. We've noticed a massive difference from the first winter we had in the house.

We have 3 WiFi extenders as like a pp said, it doesn't like solid walls.

Check electrics and when it was rewired, we've found live cables in the loft insulation taped to a junction 🤨 we are rewiring every room as it gets renovated.

Check your chimneys if planning to install wood burner, for some reason most flues are removed when they block them up.

We have shutters on all windows but do to insulation etc we've had to make them permanently non functioning. I have refused point blank to do this downstairs in case there is a zombie apocalypse 😅

I adore my house though!!

Be careful with damp. Diagnose the cause. Stone houses can't have a DPC.

I grew up in an 1800s stone cottage. No wall insulation but that wasn’t a big deal cause the walls themselves were so thick! It stayed warm in the winter and cool in the summer. No more spiders than anywhere else I’ve lived since. It was a single storey, solid flagstone floor. We had thick underlay then wooden flooring on top. I loved it - my parents still live there. It had all the heating run from a solid fuel aga when I lived there but they have since installed a combi boiler.

The glass bottles which had water in them originally and sheep heads were to keep witches away we were told 😲

I mentioned shutters above - to clarify yes I mean interior shutters, not exterior. They are common in old houses in Scotland, no idea about down south.

If you don't appear to have any do check carefully to the side of the windows - is there an area of panelling there? It's quite likely this could be the original shutters that have been dismantled/pinned shut because they were thought unfashionable during a previous renovation. You may well be able to resurrect them.

I have a 1790s stone built Georgian farmhouse. It's north facing so barely ever warms up - we're back to back with the neighbour (used to be one house but his is much smaller and older) so he gets all the sun being south facing and we get very little as we have no windows in the back of the house.

It's really cold and in winter I'd say it sits around 13 degrees without heating on. We have a gas tank supplying our GCH and don't have a fire as I hate log burners with a passion.

It's lovely and cool in summer, however, during the heatwave a couple of years ago just as the weather was cooling down, the house finally warmed up and we just could not cool it down. It was impossible to get the heat out!

We have a modern extension and have noticed how different the two parts of the house deal with the temperature. The old part is fairly consistent whereas the modern extension is either freezing cold or unbearably hot.

When we moved in it had a 35yr old heating system with no temp gauge and the house was unbearably hot. It must have been around 25-30 degrees constantly. It was awful. We have the smart trv things now and it made a big difference while we were renovating as we didn't have to heat many rooms. We're not finished yet, by a long way, but all rooms are now in use.

There are some areas which are damper than others but nothing of much concern. The previous owners didn't seem to think having drainage was a problem so we're slowly rectifying all the issues they caused.

Sadly we haven't found anything interesting in the house as the previous owners 'renovated' it in the 70s.

I agree with the WiFi comments, we struggle but it's not too bad. Re the spiders - in the old house it tends to be cellar spiders mainly which don't bother me. The disgusting fat ones prefer the newer extension - they make a dash through the library which joins the old and new house and head for the main bedroom 😭.

We only seem to have one ghost who passes through occasionally 😄

@Kandalama your house sounds amazing.

All the posts are actually endearing me even more to it!

That’s really good to know about the breathable paint, thank you. Hopefully that’s all the bubbling by the windowsill is - it wasn’t damp to touch. Might buy a damp meter just to check it out, although even if there were a little damp and rectifiable it wouldn’t put me off the property.

Will def get the SPAB book as two people have recommended it now.

I’d love to find something hidden away! How exciting!

Sheep heads?! 😮That’d scare the life out of me the first time it happened!

Wow, 1329. That’s amazing! The amount of history that has happened in that house!

Thanks, will look out for panelling. Would love to have shutters!

Be aware with adding insulation the house will still need ventilating, particularly if the chimneys are not in use. With considerable effort from a drilling company , as we have very thick granite walls, we put in an extractor fan for the hob and a heat exchanger ventilation fan in the downstairs loo where we dry clothes. This last one is amazingly efficient, it runs gently all the time and we don’t get condensation. In recent years we have also put in a heat exchange ventilation system for the upstairs . External walls eg at the back of built in cupboards can get very cold in winter which can cause issue with condensation and the extra ventilation has sorted that out. During a renovation we put underfloor heating downstairs which seems to suit the house as it is a steady heating . I love living in such a solid house and it feels cool in summer and keeps heat in winter pretty well although I’m sure out heating bills are more than you would pay in a decent new build. We also insulated between beams in the ceiling when we were redoing those, and put more insulation in the loft as we were losing lots of heat there.

Loving reading through all this!

It is amazing and we feel very lucky.
It was owned by Queens of England starting with Edward 1st s
Not Catherine of Aragon though which is a shame. Apparently Henry 8 had already given her lots of properties so ours went to one of his best mates (typical men )
Part of the building is the old court house. I’m guessing lots of scared people lined up to be sentenced. Hence we thought we’d have ghosts.

‘off with your head’ and all that.

Researching the history of old buildings is amazing. Hope you buy yours to enjoy its history too.