A fairly typical DraughtBust on a 1980’s house.
We arrived and immediately noticed that the front door was not being held against its draught seals by the latch when closed. The multipoint lock keeps had all broken and were missing. Upstairs the loft hatch had no draught strips. Their replacement window had plastic window boards on top of the original ones and these were loose, draughty and falling off. When the original wooden windows were removed the tongues on the window boards that slotted into the wooden window frames were chopped off leaving a raggedy edge. A draught was entering under the old sill and was coming up between the new window frame and the old window board. This draught could then enter the room directly as well as between the new and old window board. We refitted the window board having sealed the gap between it and the new window, sealed round the edges then refitted the cover trims that had previously been used to cover over the join between the new window frame and cover window board.
Two of the window sashes had dropped as their bottom ramp pieces that hold the sash up when closed had disappeared, for this reason there was a gap at the top of the sash which showed daylight and was letting in a draught. We took one rising wedge piece from each side of the landing window and used these on the bottom of the two problem window sashes in the bedrooms to sort out their problems.
There were a lot of big holes around the pipes that went through the airing cupboard ceiling, these were all filled. There was also one for a wire in the g/f WC. It went through into the first-floor void where it should not have been draughty but was; it was letting a horrible cold draught in. There was a big gap around the kitchen sink waste pipe that we sealed up both internally and externally.
The back door multipoint locking rail had been removed and the top and bottom cut off and it had been refitted with just the lock and central latch operating. It needed a new rail and all new keep plates. This is outside our scope or budget so we requested that the tenant inform the landlord about it.
The front door latch keep was adjustable and once adjusted the door sealed nicely against all of its draught seals when closed and the handle lifted to engage the multipoint hook bolts.
The tenants were good and seemed to keep the bathroom window open all the time. There was a bedroom above a throughway that was beside the house and that room was severely cold, almost unusable and appeared not to have any insulation in the floor.
We talked through managing their heating system which only had an old dial type thermostat and no programmer, and the occupants were delighted with our suggestions.