Boiler Installation in Irvine

Irvine is an old royal burgh round the harbour and the High Street that was made a new town in 1966, and it grew outward in stages through estates such as Bourtreehill, Girdle Toll, Castlepark, Broomlands and Lawthorn, taking in Dreghorn on the way, with private estates added since. Building methods changed over those decades, and much of what went up in the later phases, like most Scottish housing of that period, was timber framed.

In a timber-framed house the walls that carry the load are a frame of timber studs, sheathed in board and filled with insulation, with a vapour control layer on the warm side behind the plasterboard. The brick or render outside is a separate skin standing off it, with a cavity in between. From inside the room the wall looks the same as any other. Knock on it and between the studs it sounds hollow. The older stone houses round the harbour and the High Street are the opposite case, with solid masonry walls that a flue is cored straight through and no frame to work round.

A boiler installation touches every layer of that wall. The boiler has to be fixed into the frame, not the plasterboard. The flue has to pass through the frame, the cavity and the outer skin, sealed at the vapour layer so moist air from the house does not get into the timber. And pipes have to cross the studs without weakening them. Done properly, none of it shows. Done carelessly, the damage stays hidden inside the wall until it is expensive.