How cold is an old house?

[letsleepingbabieslie]

Looking at buying a lovely 1860s farmhouse in Dorset. I think it's wonderful, but notice that it has solid walls (no insulation) and single-glazed sash windows. EPC is an F rating (27!).
I hate being cold. OUr current home is so cosy that we don't even need heating on most winter days.
If we can't spend a fortune on adding insulation and changing windows (which will ruin most of the character of the house) is it total madness to buy it? If you live in a similar property, how cold is it?!

get a sense of the scale we're talking about? i.e. the one we're looking at is rated F (27) and our current home is B (81)

Well for a start off that's a great indicator of the level of comfort and efficiency you're used to against what you could anticipate. On the upside I guess it means there are lots of measures you can take.

When you say you could throw money at it do you mean to improve the rating or do you mean on an ongoing basis? and importantly, is the property listed at all or in a conservation area where there are restrictions?

What kind of life do you like in your house? do you move around a lot or like to lounge on the sofa in the evening? do you embrace the thought of wearing three layers, thick socks and sheepskin slippers indoors, or are you more usually found in a tee shirt and bare legs?

It's ok snuggling up by a log burner and feeling toasty warm, but what about when you open the door to the hall and enter an artic chill, or when you get out of bed, the bath or shower and it's just not comfortable?

We have a range cooker that's on even during all but the highest heatwave, a log burner, sash windows with lined and interlined heavy curtains and blinds, lots of loft insulation and draught proofing doors including those fabric stuffed sausages up against them, but we still have to introduce an awful lot of heat.

I always think about who a house was built for as well. Farming people generally don't have time to sit around, they like the fresh air and are used to the elements. That's what you're starting with.

You do sound smitten though.

Old houses are meant to breathe, you’re almost asking for trouble if you seal it up unfortunately.

Have a look at heritage house first before taking the plunge.

You can also insulate the loft or attic space, and switching the windows for double glazed or secondary glazing can help, but it's always going to be cold.

We live in a centuries old house. Stone walls ranging from four to two feet thick. No double glazing. There is a lot of loft insulation.

It’s warm.

But we use a lot gas to keep it that way.

I grew up in a very large very old house. My mother still owns it, costs several thousands a year to heat and when it’s hot outside it’s even hotter in the house.
It’s beautiful but I swear a comfortable temperature for about 20 minutes a year.

We lived in a large Victorian farmhouse in the East of England, this was in the late 1990’s and we were on an oil boiler for heating and hot water, we were spending over £2,000 a year on oil and would have needed double that to be really warm.

We often put on 2 extra layers to be warm in the winter rather than turn the heating up, it was double glazed and had loft insulation. I would think very carefully before moving to a house with such a low rating with the current trends in fuel prices.

1908 stone built house. Single glazing upstairs, double downstairs. Big rooms.

It's not generally a cold house when the heating is on...it does warm up and stay warm. I've lived in colder.

Thick curtains help, curtain over the front door. Carpets. A woodburner. We have a bit at the back of the house that sticks out where the bathroom is and taking the old lath and plaster down and putting insultated board and electric underfloor heating has made a huge difference.

Also blocking up draughty windows.

In winter - Electric blanket on bed, fleecy slippers and a big fleecy dressing gown. Jumpers at all times.

It's lovely and cool in the summer.

It’s baltic. Without heating on in winter it is about 14 degrees. My house has only ever been above 20 in a heatwave. Costs a fortune. We have a log burner which helps. Would love an Aga.

@FTEngineerM

Old houses are meant to breathe, you’re almost asking for trouble if you seal it up unfortunately.

Have a look at heritage house first before taking the plunge.

This with bells on!

Absolutely not possible in our house, and there is no loft space to insulate.

My 2 pence, if you can't afford to insulate it you can't afford to not insulate it.

And you can absolutely improve the energy efficiency without spoiling the character. But it means going for more expensive options, like quality timber sashes (double glazed) rather than cheap plastic.

Haven't RTFT so apologies if I am repeating any PP.
We lived in a house built in the 1890s from 2011 for ten years. (Recently sold as I swore I could not do another winter in there!)

OP, if you like being warm and cosy, don't do it!!

Even with the thermostat set to low, i.e. 19c, the boiler would have to be on night and day to keep the house at that temperature. If we went without heating, the house could only maintain 10 degrees above what the outside temp was. So, 3c outside, 13c inside.

The house was beautiful, full of character and charm but my overwhelming memory of the place is of icy cold fingers and a constantly running nose from the cold.

I second what @FTEngineerM said too. If you insulate an old house which is designed to breathe you will create yourself a horrible damp problem plus potential issues with your brickwork.

Ours is Georgian G2 listed, so quite restricted on what we can do, but we've got good secondary glazing and expensive bespoke wooden double glazing where it was allowed (at the back really). It is not drafty at all. We have underfloor heating, log burners and spend approx £230 pm on gas & electricity plus about £500 pa on wood for the log burners. Our house is just under 200 sq m, brick with tiled roof (for context).

1804 detached farm house. We dry lined every room over time. Double glazed every window 28 of them our energy bills were very high we had heating on for two hours in the morning four hours in the evenings. The log burner was invaluable. Our energy bills the last few years were 3.5k per annum

My late grandmother's house was 13th century and half timbered. Cold doesn't begin to describe it. The draughts were gale force, especially the one which hit you sitting in the bath. But when it was sold, and modernised with modern heating etc, the death watch beetle woke up.

Our house was an F too. It’s a Victorian semi. The worst thing is the single glazed sash windows. It is BITTER in the room that has them still when the wind hits the front of the house. We’ve replaced all the other windows with modern double glazing and although heat does escape faster than I’d like it’s really warm everywhere with the heating on.

We’ve insulated under all the floors we’ve taken up and will put external insulation on when we come to render it eventually. But really, insulation under the floors and decent glazing has improved it ten fold from last winter! Luckily our new sashes will be in by the time the frost arrives this year so hopefully we’ll be toasty!

Just to add to my above, we have left all the air gaps under the ground floor as the house needs to breathe, we’ve added wool insulation in a net under the floor boards to allow air circulation. And we’ll be ok to render as 3/4 of the house was replaced with modern breeze block construction in the 90s as the original solid stone was crumbling. Well probably have the solid stone front sand blasted and leave un rendered / insulated.

Ps our log burner was absolutely worth its weight in gold last winter!

Ours (Edwardian, detached) was F rated when we bought it ten years ago. It was freezing in winter, but lovely and cool in summer.

We replaced the single pane wooden windows with timber frame double glazing, which made a huge difference. Then we replaced the front door, which made another big difference - the cold air used to come in loads between the door and the frame.

We still have the heating on between October and May, but it costs loads less to heat the house because the thermostat (set at 20.5 degrees C) kicks in.

This/next month, we are having a new boiler.

I think that will get us to a D rating.

We really should block up the chimneys as I can feel draughts coming down some days.

1780s cottage on 3 floors. It is drafty and damp but I don't feel the cold too much.

The bottom floor (3 story) doesn't get much daylight so it stays quite cool until I light the fire. There is lots of daylight on the second and third floor (old weavers cottage) so when it's sunny it warms up quickly.

I do wear more clothes in this house compared to my last 1920s semi!

I live in a 1780s ground floor flat with really thick walls and huge single glazed sash windows everywhere, and honestly it does get cold in the winter but when we renovated we added radiators (there was no heating before we bought it!!) that are the old fashion three column thick ones and they heat up the whole property extremely quickly and retain heat for some time. In the summer it stays lovely and cool in here.

Most of the cold in the winter comes in from under the floor boards and the front and back door which were additions in the 40s. The time of year it's actually coldest in here is around now when it's nice and sunny outside but has a cooler breeze. It's quite chilly in here now although T-shirt weather outside! We had the heating on this morning. The gas and electric costs are quite high, but worth it for the period features I love.

@WellTidy ours sounds a bit like yours albeit a semi - gloriously cool even when it's 34 in summer, insane in winter. Do you mind my asking what you spent on the replacement timber frame windows? I've always assumed the cost would be beyond prohibitive. Thanks.

The house I currently live in is mid 1800s, and is warm in winter and hot in summer, but it has VERY thick walls (about 2 foot thick in most places) and double glazing as it somehow evaded being listed. However, I think the double glazing is a contributor to the damp thar regularly springs up everywhere, because as others have said old houses are designed to have more airflow. We previously lived in a house the same age without double glazing and similarly thick walls and it was nearly as warm and no damp issues. We did need a wood burner though on top of the central heating when it was really cold. Both houses stay really cool in summer which is a bonus.

I would NEVER buy a house of this age with just single skin brick construction, my nan lived in one and it was absurdly cold all the time. You have to remember, when the farmhouse was built the owners probably had access to cheap fuel, such as logs etc so they could run fires and ranges constantly.

@smogsville It was pricey, but a lot of that was because we have original stained glass panels, and we wanted to keep these and put them into a new timber frame. It meant that we needed someone more specialist. The house also isn't at right angles (as most old houses aren't). We also have bloody awkward bays ...

Total cost of the windows was about £40k, to include scaffolding, VAT etc.

They're really lovely, but it was expensive.

Thanks @WellTidy that's about what I'd thought. It's going to be a chilly winter this year!

We all have a vast array of onesies to see us through the winter.

I hate being cold, but the combination of a onesie and an electric blanket keeps me happy.

A Karcher window vac is essential for condensation on single glazed panes though.

Not RTWT but how thick are the walls and what are they made of?
I have lived in the past in a mid-Victorian, thick solid brick walls house with no cavity gap. Single glazed, big, original windows and very high ceilings.

It was certainly no colder than any other average house. It did have very thick external walls though. So after getting the heating going and warming up the air, it could be turned down and the solid walls kept the heat in, surprisingly very well.

However that was brick walls and in a suburban area. If yours is stone or something else then I don't know how that would be. Also as you say Dorset, then again maybe the coastal location would make a difference to how the house handles cold and draughts in terms of winds or damp sea mist etc.

Oh, and it was very cool in summer even on really hot days. You would only realise how hot it was outside when you went out, as in the house it was very cool. It also had no damp at all. It had original ventilation bricks and pull-down ventilation flaps and lots of natural ventilation (hello gap-ridden original front door and keyhole that the wind whistled through!) But even that didn't make it cold inside. Not all of these old houses are cold and damp.