I wasn't sure whether to include this video as I think it's irritatingly patronising. What do you think?
Annoying videos aside, cavity wall insulation can make a huge impact on your home heating bill and on your carbon footprint. About half the houses in Britain have cavity walls, although if your house is under 25-30 years old it probably had the cavity walls insulated at the same time it was built.
If you live Britain you can contact the Energy Saving Trust who will put you in touch with a local contractor. They will check whether your house already has cavity wall insulation by drilling a small hole in your exterior wall to have a look. They will fill the hole up again when they're done so there is nothing to worry about, and they will carry out the check free of charge. If you don't have cavity wall insulation it's great news in a way, because you can save up to 15% of your home heating bill (abut £90 per year) by getting insulation installed. That's about the same as you can save by having your loft fully insulated - almost as much heat leaves your house through the walls as through the roof.
It costs about £500 to get cavity wall insulation installed. It's a quick and clean procedure. And you should recoup the cost in lower heating bills within about 5 years. There may be grants available, so ask the Energy Saving Trust about grants when you speak to them.
We've already got cavity wall insulation. It was here when we bought the house. But if we didn't I would definitely get it done. It's one of the most important things you can do to save energy, save carbon (about 3/4 of a tonne per year), and save yourself loads of money.
If you get a contractor to come and check whether you have cavity wall insulation, you can tick "I've done one thing on the list!" in the poll in the right-hand-sidebar. If you need to install insulation and you do it, you can tick it again.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
A Guide to Cavity Wall Insulation
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7 comments:
We had somebody out to check ours and they said it was already done, though (to me) it looked like old style loft insulation but in the walls.
But I wonder how good it is, bearing in mind it was done well over 10 years ago?
Once done they tend not to re-do it but I bet there's better insulation that can be used these days.
I notice they didn't say what could be done with solid walls either ...
We got cavity walls done this week with a nationwide company called miller pattison, only had to pay £150 for a 3 bed semi- the rest is paid for by a grant from the government. If you are on low income/ benefits you can get it even cheaper or for free!
Ours was done through Miller Pattison too! The discount came via our local council, although Powergen had a similar offer going.
We got it done just before Christmas and only had the heating on for 2-3 hours a day in certain rooms, despite having a tropically-bred Kiwi and 6mo baby in the house :)
Hi there, thanks to you I went up into the loft the other day and realised our lagging was way too thin. We went to B & Q yesterday and got enough to do the loft once. We are going back next week to buy another load to lay over the top.
Thank you for giving us a push in the right direction.
Here's to lower heating bills!
Julie x.
We had Miller patterson too ! We paid £240 for a detached 3 bed house and £40 of that was hiring a thingy to over the conservatory (that's the technical term). I got it via a scheme from scottish gas.
All the energy companies have targets to meet on energy efficiancy and promotion and some of them do it by giving cut price insulation and for a lot of them you don't have to be a customer.
My parents (living in Scotland) got their entire house done with efficient boiler, new radiators ( which were also moved to internal walls), insulation and lagging all for nowt from the Scottish Parliament. It's now so hot in there I always fall asleep when I visit!
The video is definitely cheesy, but contained one or two snippest of usefull information (like the picture of the hole being drilled!).
And I must look at getting ours done.
@Simon - I didn't think it was that easy to extract the insulation, so I doubt it would be worthwhile financially to replace it even if the modern stuff is any better.
Neil.
One of these days I really ought to get round to doing ours. Trouble is it'll involve stripping all the tiles off the outside and rehanging them over new insulation.
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