Retro-fitted double glazing?

[Maki]

This is useful:

http://www.table-references.info/met...-dew-point.php

[Ocean1]

Not that difficult, cough cough... I have 30 IGUs in my house, some are quite large. I just don't see myself doing what you described 10 years from now...

P'raps not. It is, however the same process that was used the first time around, without anything like the materials cost.

But no, I wouldn't be attempting a full re-build of every unit in a house, I'd spend the energy making the original manufacturer's life very very difficult, expired warranty or not.

Fact is most leaks aren't age related, they're pinholes in the sealant that only become apparent when the small amount of dessicant in there becomes saturated. I've seen two or three IGU's fail in a house lot in the first year or two, very few beyond that and failing a spectacular catastrophic sealant decomposition a decade down the track I doubt you'd ever find a whole houseload with the problem.

One caveat: most IGUs will eventually leak if the installation procedure or frame design doesn't allow for adequate drainage. If the laminate is allowed to continually sit in water the unit WILL fail.

DAMpubliclyHIK

[mashman]

The windows will collect (or show) the condensation and may be contributing by way of being poorly insulated (via thermal bridging of the frames) but they do not cause the elevated moisture vapour content that is the primary problem. So, you have two problems. 1. poorly functioning/quality double glazed windows (it does happen) and 2. an excess of and/or poor management of moisture vapour.

Is your house single level, split level, or two story? What sort of roof construction is it? Do you shut the windows when you go to bed at night? which rooms/windows show the most and least amount of condensation? Is the veneer strandboard on th einside faces of all the exterior walls? What sort of ceiling lining do you have? What sort of sealer/paint/polyurethane was used on the veneer (does it breathe and allow moisture vapour to pass through?), What sort of wall wrap was used? The permeability of walls and cladding plays a really big part in moisture vapour control. You should replace your dehumidifier with one that is known to work well and leave it overnight in each room (one at a time) and monitor the condensation results. I'm thinking that maybe the walls of your house aren't breathing properly and elevated moisture vapour is the result.???

Your breathing is a big part of the condensation production process. Your breath has an RH of 95% at 35 degrees (rapidly elevating the RH of the colder surrounding air) and adds about 1 litres of water to the air for each person (when at rest) A lot more when your wife wears her strap on. Does your dehumidifier keep up with the occupants overnight moisture vapour production? Is there any capacity left over to address the production from cooking, washing, ironing, exercising etc?

To help figure out what part the windows have to play, you could find other home owners with the same joinery and see what experiences they are having? If you are all experiencing the same thing and the manufacturer installed the windows, you probably (time dependent) have a potential claim against them.

At least one window in every house is open throughout the day. The windows in the bathroom are generally cracked open all night. There are gaps between the sliding doors in the lounge, gaps enough to allow for a generous airflow around the room. If it ain't about 12 degrees in the house, we generally don't put the heating on. The heating is a heat pump at one end of the house and a couple of little radiators at the other end of the house... again though, they're hardly ever on (maybe 15 times over winter).

Single level. Tin roof. Not all of them. They pretty much all have condensation (it isn't constant condensation, some days there's feck all). The walls are 2+ inch thick particle/resin board, not sure what the veneer is (no need for jib), but it comes as smooth as a babies bum from the factory, prime and paint, completely waterproof so I highly doubt that they breath and let moisture flow through. Not sure what the paint is. I highly doubt it's the walls as I wanted walls that wouldn't breath, but that's obviously no guarantee. Ceiling and walls are lined with pink bats and wrapped with that weather wrap stuff. Unfortunately we can't go back to the window people coz the builders were dicks and didn't pay the window company for their houses and subsequently the window folk went out of business. I'm leaning towards the windows being shite. Those little weep holes for the condensation run off allow cold air to riser through them at night. I blocked them once upon a time and to an extent it helped, but as there was still condensation that wasn't a long term strategy. Other houses around us don't suffer as much with condensation, we've compared on like for like nights, but they do suffer... that could be due to them heating their houses to sauna level... having said that we do have triple sliding doors, 2 ceiling to floor metre width windows, 2 lots of 4-5 metre ceiling to floor windows and then lots of "normal" sized windows in the place.

I guess we're a house of heavy breathers and my wife doesn't need a strapon, she has fat fingers The clothes are dried outside, the ironing gets do by some ironing fairies, when cooking the extractor is on and the window is open, @exercise... essentially the house is well ventilated, no doors are closed and when yer sitting with socks off you can feel a wee breeze lappin at yer tootsies.

[BMWST?]

Got to duck out but I will comment on this issue as it is not straight forward and yes and no answers will vary greatly depending on the project specifics but I will say this. The RH in roof spaces at different times of the day for different construction types are much higher than within the house. This means that in some instances at least part of the time you may be making things worse by using that air.

await your comments later.Interesting stuff.

[flyingcrocodile46]

await your comments later.Interesting stuff.

Gotta go get and eat tea then the game is on so maybe later.

Mashman Your walls not breathing and big non breathing (even blocked the condensation channels to stop the air ) glazing units are not helping. Sorry. gotta go

[BMWST?]

Single level. Tin roof. Not all of them. They pretty much all have condensation (it isn't constant condensation, some days there's feck all). The walls are 2+ inch thick particle/resin board, not sure what the veneer is (no need for jib), but it comes as smooth as a babies bum from the factory, prime and paint, completely waterproof so I highly doubt that they breath and let moisture flow through.

It finally came to me the type of house you may have.I cant remember the actual brand names.Instead of conventional timber framing the walls are 35mm thick mdf or particle board with melamine coating(very similar to kitchen cabinets),and the ceilings are about 20mm boards of the same type of stuff which are supported by the roof trusses.The exterior is battened and clad/insulated in the normal way.Nowadays the use a 70 mm non structural frame to create the insulation cavity ,they used to just use a 35 or 45 mm batten.

[nodrog:Me]

UVPC isnt acrylic

[Maki]

It finally came to me the type of house you may have.I cant remember the actual brand names.Instead of conventional timber framing the walls are 35mm thick mdf or particle board with melamine coating(very similar to kitchen cabinets),and the ceilings are about 20mm boards of the same type of stuff which are supported by the roof trusses.The exterior is battened and clad/insulated in the normal way.Nowadays the use a 70 mm non structural frame to create the insulation cavity ,they used to just use a 35 or 45 mm batten.

So the structure of his house is supported, not by a frame but with 35mm particle board? In that case it had better be waterproof. Everyone knows what happens to particle board that is constantly moist. They put it into boxes and label it Weetbix. Apparently it is the stuff they use to build All Blacks.

[Ocean1]

Instead of conventional timber framing the walls are 35mm thick mdf or particle board with melamine coating(very similar to kitchen cabinets),and the ceilings are about 20mm boards of the same type of stuff which are supported by the roof trusses..

A cardboard box?

Srsly?

[mashman]

It finally came to me the type of house you may have.I cant remember the actual brand names.Instead of conventional timber framing the walls are 35mm thick mdf or particle board with melamine coating(very similar to kitchen cabinets),and the ceilings are about 20mm boards of the same type of stuff which are supported by the roof trusses.The exterior is battened and clad/insulated in the normal way.Nowadays the use a 70 mm non structural frame to create the insulation cavity ,they used to just use a 35 or 45 mm batten.

Sounds like it... I think the stuff was called maxim panel, now metra panel by the looks of it.

[Maki]

A cardboard box?

Srsly?

[mashman]

A cardboard box?

Srsly?

srsly... the stuff can support me leaping up and down on it. Cept it isn't layered like MDF. It's compressed/compacted something or other and resin. I have seen a cross section of the stuff and it's tuff stuff.

[Ocean1]

srsly... the stuff can support me leaping up and down on it. Cept it isn't layered like MDF. It's compressed/compacted something or other and resin. I have seen a cross section of the stuff and it's tuff stuff.

I'll have a wee google later. I suspect it's one of a small group of products made of minced tree, mineral binders and one of the polymer resins.

[Maki]

srsly... the stuff can support me leaping up and down on it. Cept it isn't layered like MDF. It's compressed/compacted something or other and resin. I have seen a cross section of the stuff and it's tuff stuff.

It probably is tuff. Just make sure to keep it dry.

[mashman]

I'll have a wee google later. I suspect it's one of a small group of products made of minced tree, mineral binders and one of the polymer resins.

Sounds about right, minced tree sounds like an apt description of what I saw. I believe housing NZ, summit on google, are thinking about using it for the houses they wanna build. It's also used for apartment buildings n other applications too from what I've seen. It certainly allows a house to be erected quickly so that thems indoors can start on prepping earlier than they normally would be able to. You could probably get a house up and water tight within a day giving the Amish a run for their money with a fraction of the manpower, just 30 times the cost.