Wall heating, stage 1

It's been a busy couple of weeks. As well as continuing with repointing and plastering the walls of cellar 4, the "Techniksraum", we made some major steps with the heating installation.

Having already started with the black panels (see photo above), which simply stuck on the the styrofoam internal insulation of the living room gable wall, the south wall, insulated with wood fibre board, had to be tackled. First step, a skim coating of special plaster (actually, the same sticky, glue-like paste that I used to stick the insulation boards to the wall) so the panels would adhere, as the fibre board doesn't bond like styrofoam.

 Once this had hardened, after a couple of days, the same uninsulated black panels were stuck on, and we could begin installing the wall heating pipes. Under the expert guidance of Sace Bakan, who did the more tricky sections, I was let loose. It's definitely more challenging than it looks, being like a big labyrinth, but once the basic principles are learned, it's quite fun. Though my speed will never match his!

Living room done.

A little extra styrofoam to make a cabinet for the distributor.

The bedroom, on the other side of the house, had a slightly different configuration. The southern wall was insulated internally, using the same wood fibre boards on account of this being the half-timbered wall, while the eastern gable wall had been externally insulated. This meant that different wall heating panels had to be used, blue ones, this time, with a built-in, 1cm thick layer of styrofoam backing. This ensures that the wall heating doesn't heat the whole external wall, which would wick the heat away, and instead direct it solely into the plaster that will eventually envelope the whole system. After treating the walls with a plaster primer, to improve bonding, the panels were stuck on using foam

The small room to the north east of the bedroom got similar treatment, but this time only one wall, as it's small enough. The unheated wall will eventually have shelves or wardrobes in front of it, but this will probably be my home office for the first while.

The next steps will be to secure the panels more firmly to the walls using special wall plugs.

Last week, a man from the power company was in to install a new, dedicated meter for the heat pump, so it's all connected up and ready to run, once the spaghetti pipes are connected to the distribution manifolds. Looking forward to a bit of heat!