Retro-fitted double glazing?

[mashman]

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

I'd be surprised if it would soak up water... although having said that they do reseal the edges that they cut.

[flyingcrocodile46]

Triboard or Tripanel homes came on the market in the mid to late 90's.

Not in my first 50 choices.

Mashman, your problem is that the walls (probably floors and ceilings as well) do not allow diffusion (uptake, migration and release) of moisture vapor to occur. This will almost certainly be resulting in significantly elevated RH when they are occupied and with nowhere else to go the moisture vapour will dew point on your windows if the temperature of the glass is more than 1 to 1.5 degrees lower than the room temperature.

Bad choice of building products and not much you can do about it other than to reduce the RH level (as previously suggested) a little bit of ventilation and a good dehumidifier (running overnight) is about all you can do to improve your lot. Oh yeah.. Un-block the drainage holes .

[mashman]

Triboard or Tripanel homes came on the market in the mid to late 90's.

Not in my first 50 choices.

Mashman, your problem is that the walls (probably floors and ceilings as well) do not allow diffusion (uptake, migration and release) of moisture vapor to occur. This will almost certainly be resulting in significantly elevated RH when they are occupied and with nowhere else to go the moisture vapour will dew point on your windows if the temperature of the glass is more than 1 to 1.5 degrees lower than the room temperature.

Bad choice of building products and not much you can do about it other than to reduce the RH level (as previously suggested) a little bit of ventilation and a good dehumidifier (running overnight) is about all you can do to improve your lot. Oh yeah.. Un-block the drainage holes .

If by that you mean multiple layers of a sheet of something, then this is not the stuff you're looking for. As Ocean says, it looks more like minced tree with solidified sticky stuff packing it out between a couple of layers of veneer (dunno what that's made of).

The odd thing is this place takes less to heat that the last place, last place being yer usual jib on frame with gap filling bats and brick clad, where both places had about as much condensation as each other. I get the idea behind moisture etc... and if I have gaps all over the place there's nothing I can do about it other than run a dehumidifier constantly as the weepy holes allow the moisture in (at the perfect place to condense ) whilst I'm sleeping and the shite windows collect the moisture and make pretty patterns on the window. I don't have the wee holes blocked in this place and only did it for a short period of time as an experiment, that "worked", in the last place. I want a sealed house next time. I have a design in mind, but need to run it past a few people first to decide on materials and feasibility. If I had enough cash I'd love to build a second house into a hillside. Damn I'd love to retrain so that I could design and build shit... ah well.

[Ocean1]

it looks more like minced tree with solidified sticky stuff packing it out between a couple of layers of veneer (dunno what that's made of).

It's a particle board. It's made of dead tree and "a resin", the details of which remain undefined. Interestingly, (for tech boffins) you don't actually need a resin, if you squish dead tree hard enough the sticky bits of dead tree called lignins do a pretty good job of keeping it in the squished shape.

See here: http://metrapanel.co.nz/METRA%20Tech...ta%20Sheet.pdf

Thing is, it's sooooooo cheap to produce there's been a multitude of NEW, IMPROVED applications for that general class of material. 30 years ago they sold it as an exterior cladding board. Briefly.

Oh, guess who approved that as a building material.

[mashman]

It's a particle board. It's made of dead tree and "a resin", the details of which remain undefined. Interestingly, (for tech boffins) you don't actually need a resin, if you squish dead tree hard enough the sticky bits of dead tree called lignins do a pretty good job of keeping it in the squished shape.

See here: http://metrapanel.co.nz/METRA%20Tech...ta%20Sheet.pdf

Thing is, it's sooooooo cheap to produce there's been a multitude of NEW, IMPROVED applications for that general class of material. 30 years ago they sold it as an exterior cladding board. Briefly.

Oh, guess who approved that as a building material.

Certainly a few more flavours that weren't options for us 3 years ago. I wonder if it could be "shaped"?

Nick Smith?

[caseye]

Be very! surprised if what you actually have is NOT Strand Board. Not particles of wood fibre ( aka particleboard ) but strands ( typically 30 mm wide by up to 150mm long and being only approx 0.5 of a mm thick ) and then pressed together with resin to make a sheet product far superior to any particleboard ever made.
Having described the stuff I think you have.
Been in the timber, houses, sheet product range for over 30 yrs. Pretty sure it's strandboard not any sort of particleboard.I'd also venture to state that your home doesn't have vents fitted to the top of every window in the place.
Was involved in the introduction of Strandboard House building from the get go.
They( the makers of this wonderful product) were a NZ owned and operated company who tried very hard to make it happen. Unfortunately they ran out of money before things took hold and sold out to an offshore organisation.Prior to this happening though, they built many homes using Strandboard as floors, walls and ceiling linings with trusses and cladding added directly to the outsides.
Worked fucking beautifully.
But, they quickly discovered that their house were TOO airtight and this introduced high level of formaldehyde gas.This put people to sleep and made them quite sick.
So, they added permanently open( just a bit) vents to the top of every window in the house.
Stopped the problem of gassing the occupants overnight.
Also stopped the condensation problem to a large extent.
Enough ventilation to air the house, not so much that it introduced too much cold air inside to create internal condensation.
These house were well built, earthquake proof to the enth degree, well sound proofed and as solid as rocks.
They were built two stories high and in considerable numbers all around the country. Great homes when built correctly, I'd live in one and be happy that unless the ground literally opened up and swallowed it whole that we'd get alive.
Pity is, as always here, overseas interests now control the quality control and the R& D, so bugger all has happened since then.
Check to see what your home is actually built out of, if it is Strand board ( I'd be surprised if it wasn't) then look into adding the window vents, this will stop your problem in it's tracks.
It's a relatively easy retro fix, they take out the glass and cut the top 50 mm moff then they fit the vent ( which can be closed, not recommended ) then reinstall the glass.
Be interested to know what happens here.

[Maki]

Venting sounds like a good idea.

[mashman]

Be very! surprised if what you actually have is NOT Strand Board. Not particles of wood fibre ( aka particleboard ) but strands ( typically 30 mm wide by up to 150mm long and being only approx 0.5 of a mm thick ) and then pressed together with resin to make a sheet product far superior to any particleboard ever made.
Having described the stuff I think you have.

Having been around when they were constructing the house, I'm pretty sure it's particle board. So the stuff that you think I have is not the stuff that I have that you thought I had as I know the stuff that I have and think it's not the stuff that you thought it might be. I believe this stuff is manufactured in Taupo and iffen I remember correctly they wanted to open another plant somewhere.

Cool story though murderer

[BMWST?]

i think the earlier versions were a TRi BOARD panel particle board laminated between two layers of thin mdf.The exterior of these panels is completely clad over the top of a batten,so in theory the panels themselves NEVER get wet.

[steve_t]

One of my colleagues has a metrapanel house. She was stoked with how quickly it went up but noted that all of the design needs to be done preconstruction. If at a later stage you decide you'd like an extra power point somewhere, no can do. All of the panels are made to order. I'll ask her on Monday if she has any issues with condensation

[Maki]

One of my colleagues has a metrapanel house. She was stoked with how quickly it went up but noted that all of the design needs to be done preconstruction. If at a later stage you decide you'd like an extra power point somewhere, no can do. All of the panels are made to order. I'll ask her on Monday if she has any issues with condensation

What if work needs to be done on wiring and or plumbing behind the walls?

[flyingcrocodile46]

await your comments later.Interesting stuff.

As I indicated in my previous post (in addition to factors such as the environment in which the houses are situated, as mentioned by someone earlier) the type of construction and materials used changes the impact of moisture vapour. The RH levels in poorly ventilated subfloor spaces and roof spaces tends to be higher than the inside of the house for a variety of reasons.

RH % is a measurement of the level of moisture vapour in the air (relative to air temperature) and can never exceed 100%. However the actual amount of moisture vapour in the air increases as the temperature rises and decreases as the temperature decreases. We see evidence of this as evaporation and condensation.

Moisture vapour in the house diffuses up through the ceiling into the roof quite happily as the temperature of the roof space goes up (because of sun warming the roof). All is good and the RH level in the house and roof may even be balanced (but the actual amount of moisture vapour in the air of the roof will have gradually become much higher that in the house).

When the temperature in the roof space drops the RH will start to increase until it gets toward 100% and will be absorbed into timber, gib board or other absorbent material. The same thing happens when you take warm air from the roof and introduce it into a cooler room. How much of a problem this might be depends on the construction and ventilation of the roof in the first instance and the walls in the second. If you have a sealed roof membrane, the moisture vapour in the roof can't get out through the membrane. The RH and moisture vapour levels will be elevated. If the roof breaths easily then the RH and moisture vapour levels will be reduced... No (or less) problem.

I have heard of ventilation systems that have drawn air from roofs and subfloors into the house only to see an increase rather than decrease of condensation and mold problems. Also heard of installations that have resulted in saturated ceilings so bad they thought the roof must be leaking.

[mashman]

One of my colleagues has a metrapanel house. She was stoked with how quickly it went up but noted that all of the design needs to be done preconstruction. If at a later stage you decide you'd like an extra power point somewhere, no can do. All of the panels are made to order. I'll ask her on Monday if she has any issues with condensation

Cool. I'd be interested to hear about that.

What if work needs to be done on wiring and or plumbing behind the walls?

The wiring runs across the ceiling and a channel is drilled into the panel and run to the power point. Seems to make a good conduit. Plumbing runs across the ceiling too, but if it's fooked (as our was) you need to take part of the external wall (and weather wrap) out to get at the pipe.

[BMWST?]

As I indicated in my previous post (in addition to factors such as the environment in which the houses are situated, as mentioned by someone earlier) the type of construction and materials used changes the impact of moisture vapour. The RH levels in poorly ventilated subfloor spaces and roof spaces tends to be higher than the inside of the house for a variety of reasons.

RH % is a measurement of the level of moisture vapour in the air (relative to air temperature) and can never exceed 100%. However the actual amount of moisture vapour in the air increases as the temperature rises and decreases as the temperature decreases. We see evidence of this as evaporation and condensation.

Moisture vapour in the house diffuses up through the ceiling into the roof quite happily as the temperature of the roof space goes up (because of sun warming the roof). All is good and the RH level in the house and roof may even be balanced (but the actual amount of moisture vapour in the air of the roof will have gradually become much higher that in the house).

When the temperature in the roof space drops the RH will start to increase until it gets toward 100% and will be absorbed into timber, gib board or other absorbent material. The same thing happens when you take warm air from the roof and introduce it into a cooler room. How much of a problem this might be depends on the construction and ventilation of the roof in the first instance and the walls in the second. If you have a sealed roof membrane, the moisture vapour in the roof can't get out through the membrane. The RH and moisture vapour levels will be elevated. If the roof breaths easily then the RH and moisture vapour levels will be reduced... No (or less) problem.

hang on....i would say that every roof space in NZ homes are very well ventilated.IE a corrugated iron roof has a 20 mm high gap at every corrrugation.As the fan pushes the roof space air into the house fresh clean dry air form outside(if its winter and cold outside the air wil be carrying very little vapour) as it heats up in the roof space it can carry more vapour so when it enters the house(likely to be the same temp more or less as the air comimg from the roof space???) it can absorb any present water vapour(ie codensate on windows or walls) and then is pushed outside.

[flyingcrocodile46]

hang on....i would say that every roof space in NZ homes are very well ventilated.IE a corrugated iron roof has a 20 mm high gap at every corrrugation.As the fan pushes the roof space air into the house fresh clean dry air form outside(if its winter and cold outside the air wil be carrying very little vapour) as it heats up in the roof space it can carry more vapour so when it enters the house(likely to be the same temp more or less as the air comimg from the roof space???) it can absorb any present water vapour(ie codensate on windows or walls) and then is pushed outside.

Well you would be wrong. Membrane roofs have to have vents installed (and they often don't). Standing seam roofs don't have ventilation gaps (unless you build them in, and often aren't) etc. If you use the wrong underlay you will greatly reduce the benefit of natural diffusion through ventilation even through the ridges of corrugated iron. However your statement is correct IF your roof is well ventilated.