The hole truth

One of the many projects (this was about number 147 on the list) that needed doing was to get some ventilation into the bathroom. There are no external windows or vents and just a small window going into the main bedroom which clearly wasn’t ideal for many reasons! A couple of trips ago we had bought the bits to fit a ventilation fan through the wall. Now you must remember that old French farmhouse walls are pretty thick so this was a daunting task, but having asked around had been told that it’s not as a bad a job as you think.

So having worked out where we wanted the vent I chiseled off the plaster to reveal the bare wall and slowly started removing stones. After about 20 cms I then used a 50 cm long 10mm drill to go through the rest of the wall and work out where on the outside I needed to start work. The drill was only just long enough! So the same procedure was repeated externally, removing the rendering and then slowly removing stones. Repeating this procedure eventually created a hole about twice the size needed but allowing a slightly sloping (towards the outside) 100m tube to be fitted and then expanding foam in the middle with cement on each side.

Then with a couple of goes at plastering the inside, connecting the electricity supply we had take off!

So all in all not as bad a job as expected and hopefully the problems with condensation and damp will now disappear.