welcome to holly park lodge we are in
edinburgh between the scottish
parliament and the palace of hollywood
house the building you see here served
as one of the four entrance lodges to
hollywood park it is a mid 19th century
building which is listed at category b
and it also sits within a segment area
and a design landscape
generally older buildings are thought of
as poor energy performers or hard to
heat but we want to show they can be
retrofitted with good energy standards
and with minimal loss of historic fabric
here the lodge we improve the energy
performance of the building quite
significantly for those of you who are
familiar with the energy performance
certificates or epcs we brought the
building from an epc band f to band c
so you want to know how we did that
let's go inside
so the approach was to retain fittings
and finishes from significant earlier
phase of the building or remove
unsympathetic alterations such as wood
chip or flash fire doors as part of a
sensitive approach restoration scheme
we removed 1980s and 90s alterations and
we restored traditional elements in the
building we decided to insulate the
envelope of the building internally with
vapor permeable and natural derived
materials the floors were insulated at
ground level using wood fiber board that
sat underneath the timber suspended
floors
wood fiber board is a semi-rigid
material this one is a hundred
millimeters thick and but you can get
different thicknesses this was cut to
size to fit the space between the joists
it's a naturally naturally derived
material that's quite breathable as we
say really we mean a vapor permeable
material the floorboards were carefully
lifted and set aside for reuse we also
had to use some new timber from a scotty
supplier and you can clearly see the new
floorboards against the original ones
the door was insulated with aero gel
board
this is a thin material about five
millimeters thick which was cut to the
right side to the filler panels the
plywood was added over and it was
painted
all timber beading and moldings were
kept similarly all existing hardware
were retained
all the winners of the lodge were of
different dates mostly being fitted as
part of the 1995 repair works they were
single glazed casement type windows and
they were in good condition so the
decision was taken to keep them and
repair them
they were retrofitted with slim profile
double glaze units from scotty supplier
so the insulated double glazed units
were embedded in traditional linseed oil
party drop stripping was used to reduce
l infiltration and also some silicone
beading was used in some areas
for bigger gaps that were formed because
of building settlement
the timber staircase had metal nosing
and a modern covering these were removed
and the steps were repaired
here we are in what was turning to
meeting room and there's another secret
panel here
this is the wall installation which is
blown cellulose fiber this is
effectively threaded newspaper and you
can see here how it sits on top of the
masonry wall and behind the laugh and
plaster linings
at the loads here we didn't have a lot
of space between the last plaster
linings it was about 38 millimeters
which is quite narrow so a lot of holes
had to be drilled into the wall to get
the material and get a reasonable feel
to the void
it's quite a good option however
although it requires some redecoration
afterwards and it's less disruptive than
other methods especially when you have
original linings
here we also
reinstated the fireplace using a new
stone surround at the hearth and we use
the salvage cast our insert you can see
here and we also put a dumper which is
to control drafts and can be removed if
needed typically 25 of the heat is lost
through roof of building so insulating
the roof is an affecting common means of
reducing heat loss so the lodge wins to
leave the roof using wood fiberboard
again
generally naturally derived materials
are preferable because they can buffer
moisture and prevent condensation issues
so so we check what we did to the roof
here the insulation was put between the
rafters which gives us what we call a
warm roof which is quite good when you
use your attic for storage or as a
living space
the installation is held in place by
timber runners which are fastened to the
cheeks of the rasters as you can see
here so the rafters can be deepened if
required and the conventional approach
says that you should leave a 50
millimeter gap between the underside of
the starking and the top of the
insulation to allow sufficient air
movement throughout the roof which quite
important when you're insulating a roof
so to test this we actually
left the 50 millimeter gap but we also
in some areas we push the installation
against the starkin because we do have
vapor permeable materials
so we wanted to test this and monitor
how they too would perform in areas
where the structure was visible we
covered the insulation with plywood and
that was painted with breathable clay
paint same as the ceilings throughout
the lodge some areas of the lodge due to
having no or limited access to them
insulation has been installed between
the ceiling joists
wood fiber again but also hemp
insulation in some areas has been used
to trial both materials
this here is one area where you can see
how the insulation baths or boards have
been laid between the joists
so this is an office space which is used
by our staff and we want to show you the
other viewing panel here
here you can see the installation in the
sloping ceilings
in scotland these are called coombs
and
they're effectively rooms that sitting
under the roof page and there's
sometimes difficult areas to insulate
and they present an increased level of
complexity when doing energy efficiency
assessments but here the lodge we had
access from the attic space so we could
go up and slide the panels down from the
attic and because the material is quite
soft it can actually pass by through
variations in the thicknesses of the
rafters to improve the visual amenity
and traditional character of the lodge
we replace the light fittings with new
but traditional style fittings
to improve its ambience and we also use
led bulbs throughout to save energy
all the modern doors the internal ones
were replaced with traditional ones
which were more in keeping with the
character of the lodge and during the
redecoration traditional details were
reinstated like this timber corner
detail called the quirk
providing ventilation through spaces
especially following insulation works is
quite important so at the lodge we
reopened block windows at high level
such as this little quarter light at the
entrance hole
and we installed a pulley just to make
it easy to use and maintain and this is
quite good to have ventilation to avoid
condensation issues following
installation works we also installed
grille flue vents where we can reinstate
the fireplaces such as this heat and
miss grill you can see here
we also cleared and cleaned external
vents to allow sufficient air
infiltration throughout the building
part of the works at the lodge involved
long-term monitoring of the external and
internal conditions of the loads before
and after the works
this involves u-value testing which is
basically how fast heat transfers
through a structure hydrothermal
monitoring which about temperature and
humidity and nerve tightness testing
the monitoring lasted for two years and
finished this summer
the monitoring actually showed much
lower relative humidity level post
refurbishment work and when the building
is heated
the thermal performance of the walls was
also improved by 39
so remember
at the roof when we actually press the
installation against the sarkin and
where we left the 50 millimeter
recommended gap
so post monitoring the results actually
showed a similar level of humidity which
actually shows us that when capillary
active and vapor open materials are used
the internal humidity is actually
controlled and when the roof is wind and
watertight moisture doesn't build up a
building energy assessment card out
before and after the works to assess how
the building performs
this is to get an energy performance
certificate or epc
which for those of you who are not aware
this is basically a way of assessing and
comparing the energy and environmental
performance of dwellings
before the works the building was a ban
f which is quite low but standard of
many unimproved traditional buildings
after the works it reached pan c which
is a huge improvement considering there
was no loss of historic fabric
in 2022 we're hoping to have another
phase of works
and possibly employ the use of
renewables such as an air source heat
pump
in cities where they're district heating
schemes it may be easier to reach the
desired energy standards but with rural
properties which are off the gas grid
you may need to use the use of a
renewable system or another energy
storage just to get you over the line
so i hope you enjoyed our tour today and
that it gave you some inspiration on how
to
improve your older building thank you
for watching
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