Wooden Floors
Many people live in homes with draughty floors, typically those with floorboards with gaps between the boards and generally gaps under the skirtings too. Don’t assume this only happens on ground floors – it can happen upstairs too especially on houses with cavity walls.
We do not advertise but this product (DraughtEx) has proved very useful and successful in draught-proofing suspended ground floors quickly and easily. Cheaper alternatives are string and wax, paper mache, masking tape or wood glue mixed with sawdust.
We would much rather that all floors were insulated as well as draught proofed but here is a link to an alternative website. The second product is the one we find works best. We do not agree with everything on there but it is generally helpful.
Skirtings
We often find gaps behind, under and in corners of skirtings. These take the biscuit, not even fixed thankfully, slotted for a wire, big gaps everywhere
Beam and block floor problems
I have discovered a systematic problem with beam and block floors.
While surveying the ground floor of a beam and block home I noticed some dark staining to the edge of a light coloured carpet (I had seen this before upstairs with wood floors before) this dark staining is not due to poor hoovering but due to wind blowing through the edge of the carpet, leaving some dirty dust stains behind.
For a while I couldn’t understand how there could be a draught but the sole plates of the internal walls had been fixed before screeding and in order to save time grouting seemed to have been left to the screeders, not a bad idea except may be they wetted everything and didn’t really do the grouting. Then disastrously and predictably the plate shrank back a little as it dried out, 1/8″ each side, just enough to leave a nasty draught in every home built this way. ( Which of the big boys cuts corners like this?) solution is to take up the carpet and caulk the gap between the edge of the floor and the wall/skirting.
In the kitchen there were draughts coming in under the skirtings which were clearly visible on thermal imaging! Solution – seal floor covering to skirting with silicone.
