Stone house walls-improving insulation ?

[Brian Lacey]

Our cottage is around 200+ years old. The main walls are some 15/16 inches thick with an layer of plaster (painted) on the inside wall. The walls are constructed (?) of an outer skin of limestone/ironstone (local) and the inner skin is identical, all flat (dressed) on the outer/inner surfaces. In-between the skins is a cavity that is loose filled with sand and stones, from ground to eaves.
Now I don't suppose that the thermal quality of stone is all that great and the infill is not consistent or packed hard so.....are there any options open to me to improve the thermal insulation of the walls ?

I don't suppose injection of foam into the wall is an option ?

Lining the walls on the inside would be very difficult due to recessed windows and doors and then the replastering ! Rather extreme ?

Can't uses a wallpaper as no wall is flat/even and right angles don't exist.

Is there any thing that can be done or do I just live with it, as we have for a good few yrs now.

Thanks

Brian

 

[RigidRaider]

Sounds like a lovely old house, which you clearly want to understand and preserve. If dry-lining is out of the question, how about just drying? A damp old house will feel cold. You need to encourage air movement but this will just create drafts, so how about a dehumidifier?

 

[slick50]

My wife and I are renovating a 100 year old plus, (no one knows for sure how old) farmhouse. The lounge room was insulated from the inside with styrofoam under the plaster which, when my wife found out, was to be the first thing to go. We plastered the inside with clay plaster and finished it of with a couple of coats of clay paint. Before we started the room was always a little damp but since, we've had no problem. While not being a total insulation, it's not bad and the air quality in the room is great. We live on the edge of the Black Forest and the humidity here has to be felt to be believed. It's one of the big destroyers of the old houses here which are mainly built from wood, stone and clay. In the 70's and 80's there were a lot of renovations done where the walls were totaly sealed (oil based paints and solid plaster). This created damp problems. More recently builders and renovators have gone back to using the older natural materials to let the walls breath. Sadly more exspensive but a lot less problems. Hope this helps .... Kev...

 

[PerryOne]

A traditional castle is made of stone, as such its cold and unpleasant to live in. Our ancestors solved the problem by building wooden panelled rooms inside the stone rooms, thereby creating a buffer zone of still air between the wood and stone. (OK I know that air circulation starts in gaps over 16mm - but wood is an insulator, albeit not so good by today's standards and the result was warmer)
You can create a wood box inside the existing room and fill the space between the stone walls and wood with poly foam?
If you attache the wood walls to the floor and ceiling you will end up with a very warm cheap to heat room.