Various building/refurbishment questions

Can´t answer all your questions, but I had a concrete mosaic pool built around ten years ago. Almost immediately small tiles started coming off. I had the gaps replaced with new tiles in the third and fourth year. I then spent a lot of time using glue to reseat individual tiles until the year before last. In 2018 around a hundred individual tiles came off. Last year loads more and it was obviously leaking.It is now going to cost a fortune to sort it out. I will not be using any sort of tiles!!

Steve,

I see that you posted this a while back but I'm wondering what you ended up learning and what progress you were able to make, especially given the circumstances of the last year.

We are currently looking into options for insulating our roof and walls, and would be interested to hear about your experience. What type of insulation did you end up installing? Did you also insulate the walls and/or swap out the windows?

What did you decide on for your hot water system?

Thanks!

Christine

'RE 1: you need to define your 'conditioned space' .   If you do not intend to ever make the space between your ceiling and the roof usable, then your conditioned space stops at the ceiling of your inhabited floor, and you insulate directly above that (but be sure to ventilate the roof space).  It only makes sense to insulate on top of the rafters if you are enclosing what will become part of your conditioned space. 

if you have no intention of ever using the loft area as usable/conditioned space, I would go for your option C.  Option D is also possible, but then you will need  to finish it off to a presentable finish, which involves additional work and expense, which is less necessary with option C, where you only need to make certain you have an uninterrupted layer of insulation.   

I don't know if vapor barriers are typically installed in PT, but if you do use one, it goes on towards the conditioned space to prevent warm, moist air from condensing on a cold surface (=mold!!). 

The insulation will help contain the environment you create under it; if you will not be living in or using the space above your ceiling slab then there is no use in including it in you conditioned, i.e. cooled or heated, space. 

Hi,

I've only just seen the recent replies to my initial post - sorry.

To answer the insulation question: cost issues mean that we haven't gone for any insulation in the part of the house with the concrete slab ceiling. We have no intention of using the loft space, and probably would have gone for option C - the builders were talking about spraying a foam insulation over the slab. It's an option we can easily return to in the future.

All the windows have been replaced, and we haven't bothered with any insulation on the 2-3ft thick walls.

Hot water: we've ended up with an air-source heat pump being fed pre-heated water from a solar panel. The hot water will be on a circulation system. We dithered a lot on this, but as there is a long distance between the water heating gubbins and the places where we'll use most hot water, we came down on the side of the circulation system so there is no heating miles of pipes and wasting water just to wash your hands (while singing Happy Birthday of course).

Pool - we've ended with a single-pouring concrete pool, rendered and then resin lined, followed by mosaic tiles. It is the system the builder we went with uses - time will tell.

Steve