Oxley Woods Living

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.