• 135 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Originally, council housing was supposed to be available for everyone.
    A socially funded, reasonably priced, decent accommodation for anyone.
    With the added bonus for the council that they have properties vulnerable people could be housed in at cost.

    And there are still legacy tenants from those days happily living in their council places.

    R2B was brought in, with the stated idea of giving long-term renters the opportunity to buy at a discount.
    A leg up onto owning and running their own house.
    Unfortunately with the way it was implemented, it ended up gutting the supply of council houses, until we reach today.
    Where only the most vulnerable have a sniff of a chance of being allocated a council house.
















  • I like to think of it like a passive action that helps handle the smaller amounts of moisture (humans breathing, cooking, laundry), but also an action that helps reduce the problems of acute issues that occur. That way, when something does happen, there is at least a dampening effect while the leak is fixed.
    Leaks and rising damp still need to be addressed, obviously.

    Examples are things like vermiculite render on the outside, Steico/Wool batts as normal insulation.

    The downside is, it’s expensive. The insulation is only as good as fibreglass/rockwool, and costs about 3x as much.


  • There is another thing that I sometimes talk about on here, breathability.
    You either need to prevent any moisture moving in any direction, or allow vapor to move with breathable materials.
    Ones that allow water vapor to move, but not liquid water.

    Older buildings, where the original materials were breathable, should ideally continue to use breathable materials. This prevents issues with water wicking through one old surface, then getting trapped behind another. It also removes the risk of damaged or badly designed vapor barriers allowing things through, as the materials themselves help get the moisture out as a passive action.