| The Ecohome : First floor bedroom |
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The
Ecohome : First floor bedroom
The largest room in the house, this was always a bedroom. Very similar
to the Creative Room directly below, the room had an ugly 1940s
fireplace and badly reconstructed window reveals. The floor was
carpeted throughout and there was a small access hatch in the ceiling
above the bay.
The fireplace was removed, followed by the
ancient carpet which was thrown triumphally out through the window
for more direct access to the skip. The levels of dust which filled
the room were unpleasant but almost insignificant compared to what
was to fall from the ceiling over the following lung-hammering months.
When the ceiling was stripped off badly cracked plaster was revealed,
which slowly and continuously shed a seemingly never-ending supply
of dust until it was boarded up. The former hatch allowed access
to a roof void which existed behind the attic room - prior to the
room being extended into it. As well as revealing the structure
of the roof, looking through the hatch revealed something altogether
more alarming.
Due to the terrible installation of the current
PVCu windows The ceiling joists - also the floor joists to the floor
above - were floating with no support above the bay windows. The
original wooden sash windows were set further back, providing direct
support to the bay floor structure. The current windows were set
forward, which meant that the joists were simply left hanging. To
remedy this a timber beam was added spanning the bay, to which the
joists in questions were strapped. The void directly above the bay
area was then filled with 400mm of fibreglass insulation recovered
from the roof void above.
A contractor was brought in to strip back
the floorboards and to apply the same OS colour hard floor wax in
semi transparent white 'Spruce'. The reason for general avoidance
of fitted wall-to-wall carpets is to reduce the House Dust Mite
which is a major cause of allergies and asthma and to reduce the
build up of ingrained dust and dirt.
Knauf dry-lining board was then applied in
the same way as used in the Creative Room with two layers of 52.5mm
boards fixed to the walls. The return at the right hand corner was
used to reduce the 'cold bridge' through the party wall. The return
on the left is to mirror the overlap with external insulation on
the front elevation that will be applied in the near future. This
room receives the greatest amount of sun and therefore the most
passive solar heating. The dry-lining helps the room to make the
most of the heat. Because this wall is yet to be plastered it is
possible to see how the boards were applied and cut to angle, revealing
the construction of the board.
The ceiling has been covered in Gyproc GRG
glass fibre reinforced plasterboard. The reason for using glass
reinforcement is the board can be thinner and in this case, 6mm.
This was chosen so as not to interfere with the cornice detail around
the edges.
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