Case Study

Parochial House Restoration
Project manager
Sean Moore
Project completion date
Parochial House

Project Background

This parochial house required a building fabric that consisted of a breathable wall lining system both internally and externally. The house dates back to 1828, and was built as a one-off residential building.  Prior to the renovation, the existing walls were extremely cold and needed to be upgraded thermally. Because the building was a listed building by the Local Authorities, it was exempt from BER certification. The walls could not be sealed due to the conservation policies. Therefore, a ‘breathable’ system was installed internally using the Optima Dry Lining System.
 
The restoration had three crucial aspects:

  • Thermal upgrade to external walls
  • Fully breathable walls
  • Improving sound insulation

The Challenge 

Because the house was a 3-storey building, the walls were 3.5 meters high. This was challenging for contractor Sean Moore and his team, as it meant that the chosen OPTIMA Dry Lining System C-channels needed to be installed at 400mm centers, with an accompanying horizontal c-channel at every 1-meter height. Certain areas of the house had curved details that needed to be dry lined, which required a member of the team to design according to the curve.
 
The shutter windows in the building had deep reveals, which also needed to be lined. This was tricky but was solved by using narrower acoustic insulation. Because the building structure needed to be maintained and restored close to its original state, the team had to ensure that they were limiting damage to the structure. To ensure that this would not occur, Sean and his team researched a lot of products and systems prior to undertaking the restoration.  Value for money was also a key aspect of this research and Sean found that the OPTIMA Dry Lining System was the most suited option for their budget; as it helped speed up installation and reduce the installation cost for the dry lining of the project.

Approach

 OPTIMA Dry Lining System gave the team the flexibility the restoration required, and allowed for easy removal and refit, which can sometimes be needed on renovation projects of historical buildings – unlike a sprayfoam system, where application cannot be redone.
 
Sean said himself that, “The OPTIMA system is very user friendly to install. Along with the help of the ISOVER team, who came on-site to carry out site demonstrations, we put the system together with ease. The system is extremely cost-effective when compared to other breathable systems and as I get a lifetime Specsure guarantee with OPTIMA, it takes a lot of weight off my mind if anything needs to be looked at again – particularly in a project like this. All in all, the OPTIMA system ticks all of the boxes for dry lining old stone walls.” 

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