Settlement house 1954 - complete renovation possible?

The walls are all nicely aligned on top of each other, so I would generally assume they are load-bearing. You can try to copy the building file from the city. There should also be a structural analysis of the building there.

That means the civil engineer should be able to assess that just from the plans, right? Are there also cases where a floor or a wall is opened up to measure the thickness of elements? That would probably be difficult immediately before the purchase.

1) Yes, a civil engineer should not see less than I do. I don’t have x-ray vision, but I have extensive experience, and the interpretation is less like witchcraft than a layperson might initially think. I’ll just say what I see:
a) in the basement, exterior wall thicknesses indicating concrete, except for the stairwell, where it apparently transitions to masonry; the central wall is also likely concrete here; furthermore, 12 cm (expectedly masonry partition walls, in the old Reich format, logical);
b) on the ground floor, a central wall of 12 cm: sufficient for a beam ceiling of this span, presumably load-bearing, likely solid brick;
Furthermore, 10 cm interior walls: no scratch plaster walls, very unlikely aerated concrete given the year of construction, and equally unlikely drywall; probably gypsum boards, also possibly pumice boards; load-bearing walls in those positions would be unnecessary and would have been built as masonry (probably then 12 cm thick), but the wall between living and sleeping rooms becomes relevant for bracing at the latest if the one between kitchen and child’s room is removed. The civil engineer should be able to deduce that these 10 cm thick walls are not load-bearing and consequently should not worry about their substitution regarding weight load transfer—however, suspicion must arise precisely because of this that they might have another function (namely bracing). Exterior walls on the ground floor with a thickness of 25 cm indicate a single-shell masonry construction;
c) in the section drawing, only a few material thicknesses of the attic are legible. The visual thickness comparison indicates, however, that nothing was dimensioned as generously as would be usual at the time to support the weight of a modern roof; and there is no apparent reason to doubt that the roof structure essentially rests on the ceiling between the ground floor and attic. Knee walls are not depicted there, and the dormers give the impression that the poet’s courtesy should remain silent about their thermal transmittance.
2) Yes, replacing belief with knowledge is classically solved by investigation; and core drillings are a popular subject for that.

The walls are all lined up nicely, so I would generally assume they are load-bearing.

Generally conclusive for load-bearing. The central wall in the attic is 10 cm thick instead of 12 cm as below, and otherwise these walls will only support themselves here. Those on the ground floor would, as explained above, be improperly dimensioned for load transfer— all based on the assumption of truthful drawings, of course.

Hi Galdreth,

I bought a similar property, but with a completely different energetic approach than yours. I left the structure of the house as it was. Without extra insulation, etc. The money you put into that probably won’t come back. So you don’t have any economic advantages.

I renewed all pipes/wiring, completely renewed the electricity as well, new floors, new bathroom, and new gas heating including all radiators. Also replaced the doors and changed the door heights. I think the total stayed under 30k.

But I don’t have a basement!

With 50k and a bit of sweat, you can get pretty far if you don’t mess it up...

The walls are all nicely aligned on top of each other, so I would generally assume they are load-bearing.

You can try to copy the building file at the city office. There should also be a structural calculation of the building.

Unfortunately, there is no file with structural calculations at the city office and the owners don’t have anything either.

) in the sectional drawing, only a few material thicknesses of the attic floor can be read. The visual thickness comparison shows, however, that nothing was dimensioned so generously as was usual at the time to support the weight of a modern roof;

Insulation should basically be light. Would photovoltaics already be overcritical there? That would really be a shame.

The insulation of the dormers is probably hardly possible without covering everything around them, or am I mistaken? The basic idea was to adapt the roof covering equally new to the wider insulated façade.

With 50k and a bit of sweat, you can get pretty far if you don’t mess it up...

Impressive achievement! The economic consideration clearly speaks against such an action like ours. But we really want to reduce our footprint as far as possible. Definitely, living without any insulation would be too harsh for us in terms of comfort. Currently, we live in an uninsulated place (pay half as much heating costs as cold rent) and still soon have cold feet again.

One more question that comes to mind: Since there is a wood log boiler from 1999 still in the basement: Is it possible to use this in a bivalent operation with a heat pump (savings option air-water heat pump)? Then to add heat during extreme cold phases? One disadvantage is that you need a water circuit with high flow temperature for the boiler so that no condensate forms. Are there people who do something like this?

I wouldn’t do it completely without insulation either. Our insulation, for example, is from 1992 and our house is definitely well insulated with it. It keeps the night cold out for a long time in summer and retains the heat well in winter – which I wouldn’t have thought before.

But a good friend bought an old uninsulated house and didn’t insulate it either, and they have enormous (!) heating costs. Without the fireplace in the living room, they would be cold all the time. So a healthy amount of insulation should definitely be considered.

By the way, there are no building plans or structural calculations anywhere for our house, for whatever reason. That doesn’t seem to be uncommon.

Yes, in my opinion, it doesn’t work without insulation.

I am currently actively working on the topic. Including painting, about 28,000 gross for approximately 180m², so a little over 150€/m². Only about 35% of the costs are for the insulation material itself, in my case stone wool. So it doesn’t make a huge difference whether there is a lot of insulation or little.

For me and probably also for the thread starter, the problem is that insulation is anchored on an old facade (extra costs) and with plastic insulation, additional fire barriers would have to be installed due to the height of the house (if the roof is living space), so plastic insulation is not significantly cheaper either.