Our constant mantra is to take the opportunity to insulate where ever and when ever possible. Mr and Mrs Gillis of Whitley Bay recently asked us to recover their hanging tiles around their bay window as they had started to fall off.

Naturally we were delighted to assist with maintaining this handsome pre war semi-detached house. The owners asked if it was possible at the time of doing the work to add some insulation behind the tiles.

Scaffolding was erected to allow our workmen to work in a safe and efficient manner and then the tiles were stripped off. Behind the tiles was some bitumen felt which ad seen better days but had effectively protected the internal timber structure for the past 100 years.

The tongue and groove floor boards were carefully removed and store to one side. We then installed a multi foil / bubble wrap [Airflex] type insulation onto the inner face of the bedroom wall. This will provide an insulation layer with an “R” value of 1.95 m²K/W. This was then added to using a wool materials which acts to hold the multi foil in place, provides its own thermal barrier and is fitted tightly to stop draughts. All in all this provides a thermal barrier equivalent to a U value of 0.3W/M²K which exceeds Part L of the Building Regulations of 2006 (0.35) and comes close to today’s standard of 0.22W/M²K – [Building Regs – Page 17]

The boards were replaced and a breathable membrane then stapled to the timber boards and the tiles fixed back on with aluminium nails.

A lead flashing was used to cover the top of the tiles in the traditional manner.

We are delighted to be able to show you the finished product, before and after.

You will see that we managed to replace the tiles exactly as they were taken off. During a process like this it is often the case that there are a number of tile which won’t survive the removal process either because they have become brittle or they have rusted onto the steel nails which were used to fix them. In this case we lost almost one complete row of the decorative “fish tails” and so had to find replacements from a supplier in Birmingham, Dreadnought Tiles ( http://www.dreadnought-tiles.co.uk/).

Fortunately Dreadnought are still making new fish tails so we ordered a few boxes and completed the job.

Old and new “Fishtails”

……and finally a word from our clients, Mr and Mrs Gillis:

“We are delighted with the work done to our bay window by Macoun. We wanted to take the opportunity of the work to install some insulation to the bay window and in this respect the Macoun specification was just what we were looking for. The trouble taken by the company to match the few tiles that were broken during the stripping down was excellent and produced a result which matched perfectly with original and the bay of the neighbouring property. We would certainly use Macoun again for similar work.”