Oxley Woods Living

Life in an Oxley Woods eco house

 
 

Posts Tagged ‘condensation’

 

The drip drip effect at Oxley Woods

February 3, 2010

It’s not been long since we moved back into our home at Oxley Woods. The newly installed windows are a vast improvement over the old. Personally, I prefer their appearance, but most importantly, so far, they’re proving weather proof! We’ve had rain, we’ve had snow, we’ve had wind… and so far so good, the water has remained on the outside of the property!

So, for the first time since June 2008, it seems our Taylor Wimpey and Wood Newton constructed eco house is water tight!

Unfortunately, it’s water tight, but still, in the case of one room (and the skylight area, of course), still rather wet.

Our Son’s bedroom is at the front of the property. It has a corner window, the same design and orientation as the kitchen on the ground floor. Unfortunately it gets wet. Very wet.

A couple of days ago I grabbed some photos, it wasn’t actually anywhere near as bad as it can be. Below show his bedroom window, our daughters window in the neighbouring room, our bedroom window, and finally the kitchen window for comparison.

Front bedroom

Middle bedroom window

Master bedroom

Kitchen window

As you can see, there’s quite a dramatic pool of water in our Son’s bedroom.

This is not unusual. It’s been very bad since we moved back in, and following a meeting on site here at Oxley Woods last week with Wood Newton and Taylor Wimpey we’re not even sure what’s going to happen. It seems they don’t really know what the problem is (sound familiar) and why this particular section of glass is suffering so much, when all others around it are not. It’s not a hot room in the winter, and it’s not unique in it’s style/position (other than elevation, it’s much the same as the kitchen, which by rights should be the “damper” of the two rooms.

Our son doesn’t breath more than myself and my wife combined, or even probably much more than our younger daughter in the next room. We don’t hang things on the radiators… there just seems to be a problem with the glazing in his room.

We really hope this gets resolved as soon as possible, as water on wooden windows cannot be a good thing, neither can the damp in a children’s bedroom, and the fact the water runs down the recently painted walls, leaving run marks as it goes, certainly isn’t pleasant at all.

Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions as to what could be causing this, please feel free to comment below, as we feel we need all the help we can get to resolve our problems right now!

Skylight proves a damp squib

March 10, 2009

During November, and some cold days and nights, another problem came to light with the design and/or construction of our Wood Newton/Taylor Wimpey Oxley Woods eco home.  And once again, it involved water, and glass.

This time, rather than water coming in through walls or windows, we noticed some small, expanding water marks on our top floor ceiling.  These were reported very quickly, but still developed to become even worse, and have left stains and marks in several places which are, largely due to the weather, still untreated.

The problem, it turns out, is cold bridging around the edges of our skylight, which have meant a great deal of condensation can and clearly has, on more than one occasion, formed on the glass.  This has then apparently been finding its way behind and down the plasterboard, pooling, then coming through the plaster on the ceiling and around the sky light.

At first, due to the volume of water and size of the water marks, we all feared the worse, more leaks, but condensation is the conclusion reached after a couple of inspections.

We have been presented with two approaches for repair.  One is to wait for a spell of dry and frost free weather, so a team of men can lift the glass from the roof and infill the cavities with foam insulation.  The other is to drill several small holes and pump the insulation in that way, from the inside of the house.

Given the previous record with repairs and damaged done, not to mention hassle caused, we decided to go for option one, and as I write this, now in March (over three months since the problem appeared) we’ve not had any update on when this will be carried out.

The ceiling, still looks a mess.  The photographs below were taken at the end of November and start of December, it now looks even worse I’m afraid.