Air Brick Sleeves/ventilation

Hi Chris your damp course sits on your air brick you should have an extension piece going down under your suspended floor from the air brick you should be able to take the bricks out and clean them easy enough with out damaging anything depending on the age of the house to be honest cant sea how the insulation as got into them

Chris, It depends on the airbrick type. some old houses simply had been designed with vented cavities and should never have had a one size fits all after market insulation put in as it caused damp and cold spots etc, especially the early rock-wool type. Equally installing sleeving isn’t always the answer either as some air bricks were for cavity venting designed to work by venting the empty cavity, insulation stops the design doing its job, you get cold damp spots in the middle of walls etc so pointless. An ill conceived gov’t scheme by politicians not construction specialists led to a rake of one size fits all green deal, energy saving ideas that made alot of money for a few PLC’s cost councils £kks and are failing disproportionately as kids with 7 hours training were let loose with drills and cavity insulation. cavity bridging is often needed depending on your DPC (or lack of it in really old houses) dictated by the Suspended floor type height, outside height of ground to internal floor, (for water ingress) and what the old insulation was and what the new is going to be. knocking out airbricks isn’t difficult but is fiddly, if the contractor is doing this you will be paying for him taking risk on time as if the walls are crumbly old mortar you sometimes end up replacing alot more than the few knocked out. The vent systems can be quite pricey also. I would ask about if periscope vents are required or bridge vents. Especially if you have less than 75mm of cover under external vent outside, and suspended floor inside. if he doen’t know the answer, cant give you an engineers report, or looks flustered and confused, run a mile and get someone else or you’l be doing it again in another few years. hope this helps. Id equally look to whovever put the original in as if they were reputable and it was insurance backed warranty you may well be able to get remedial done under the warranty based on defective workmanship the installers PI cover, presuming it wasn't a cowboy builder.

Hi you don't say how old the property is however on older properties before cavity's were insulated the airbricks supplied ventilation to cavity as well as to suspended floor so there would be no airbricks sleave. But it is an easy job to remove existing airbricks and replace with all in one sleaved airbricks that are ajustable