solid wall insulation questions

lauren1983

Hi,

has anyone done any internal solid wall insulation and noticed a difference in your home.

I have an old house with solid walls and im trying to weigh up if its actually worth doing and if i do it, should i go with 40mm or go for 100mm? should i use insulated plasterboard or stud wall filled with insulation? do i need some sort of damp proofing in it??

lots of questions, just wondering what others have done and what they have found works well and also works well for as little money as possible as my renovation budget is gettign abit low already . I dont mind hard work if it means abit of a saving

I would love to hear your experiences

thanks

lauren

elliot341

Hi,
We're just about to embark on battening out our walls in our lounge (its the place where we spend all our time and in the coldest winter the heating was on constantly so its where it loses most heat so my idea is to insulate just that room and see how things go)

We have a cavity but as our outer leaf is random stone we cant have it insulated. I also topped up the insulation in my loft to the reccommended level a month or so ago as well.

We're going to batten the walls with 3 x 2 treated wood, put 50mm solid insulation in between the battens, then use vapour check plasterboard over it. We're having the whole lot skimmed but im sure if u used tapered edge boards u could finish it off cheaper.
Were going to use 6 2400x1200 by 50 mm thickness insulation sheets and 6 sheets of vapourcheck plasterboard which cost about £140 delivered, and £80 of treated wood. Plus im allowing a bit extra for tools/screws etc, (i already have some drills, saws etc)

This is the first major job ive tried and so it may take longer than i think and not go quite how i imagine but ill let you know what its like when its all done.

BTW from rough U value calcs Ive done it should improve heat loss by 4-6 times or so.

I'm not expecting an instant pay back but it should definately make it feel warmer and will save some money.

Hope that helps and gives you some idea, if u decide to go down the dot & dab route I'd imagine each sheet is about 40-50 quid so would be easier to do but more expensive (for 40-50mm thick insulation).

A.Penny.Saved

lauren1983 wrote: »

Hi,

has anyone done any internal solid wall insulation and noticed a difference in your home.

I have an old house with solid walls and im trying to weigh up if its actually worth doing and if i do it, should i go with 40mm or go for 100mm? should i use insulated plasterboard or stud wall filled with insulation? do i need some sort of damp proofing in it??

lots of questions, just wondering what others have done and what they have found works well and also works well for as little money as possible as my renovation budget is gettign abit low already . I dont mind hard work if it means abit of a saving

I would love to hear your experiences

thanks

lauren

It's been a while since you started this thread, it came up in a search because I am considering internally insulating my no fines concrete home, at least in part. The lounge is the main one. The websites I have looked at say it's no job for a DIYer because it has to be done right or there can be some very bad consequences from damp. Ranging from bad mould growth which can be unpleasant and possibly dangerous and rotting ceiling timbers, ie having your roof collapse eventually.

But I cannot afford to pay anyone else to do it and it would need to be done without building regs approval because if they get involved the costs will skyrocket with them insisting on it at least meeting a 0.35 U value. I am extremely unlikely to get even close to 0.35, seeing as these houses have a U value of about 2.5 and there being limited space to fit insulation. I wanted some improvement, not the high costs and affects on living space imposed by modern regulations.

There is supposed to be a 25% wall area limit on what you can do without approval but what they don't know, won't hurt them.

The insulated plasterboard is supposed to have better thermal efficiency than glass wool so you can use less for the same performance. Celotex make quite a few different types and thicknesses. Wickes sell a type without plasterboard which isn't too expensive which could probably be bonded to plasterboard using a good glue such as Pinkgrip Dry Fix or everbuild's other special plasterboard adhesives such as AC50 Acoustic Sealant & Adhesive which toolstation sells.

MX5huggy

Since Oct 1st the regs changed so walls now need to upgraded to 0.30 with the get out that you don't have to meet it if it means a loss of more than 5% of floor space.

You would need about 60mm of celotex to achieve 0.3. which is less than you may have thought.

Avoriaz

elliot341 wrote: »

....We have a cavity but as our outer leaf is random stone we cant have it insulated. ....

Why not?

You can't use blown fibre insulation but you can use foam as far as I am aware.

elliot341

Yeah i did look into that but would have cost £1700+ so didnt go down that route!

The insulating I did do took me & my dad all weekend (like 20hrs +) to get all battens and insulation cut and put in between. Plasterer boarded over and we're just waiting for all the plaster skimming to dry out so we can paint.

It'll be a little while til i know if it makes much of a difference (tho it didnt seem too icy cold this morn even tho it was frosty outside!). Im concentrating on draught proofing my leaky patio door & sealing up (temporarily) my chimney stack to stop excessive infiltration of air.

I'll post updates every so often on how it seems.

A.Penny.Saved

MX5huggy wrote: »

Since Oct 1st the regs changed so walls now need to upgraded to 0.30 with the get out that you don't have to meet it if it means a loss of more than 5% of floor space.

Thanks for pointing out the changes in the regs.

They are not really making much of an allowance really because it's usually the expense and difficulty of fitting it with doorways and windows and that's before things like re-wiring is paid for any sockets or light switches on the affected wall. IMO the regs are plain stupid in that they try to prevent people making any improvement rather than being far more flexible so that smaller improvements can be made with far less expense. For many people the regs just make it far too expensive to do anything to improve a homes thermal efficiency.

I've already paid electricians over £1000 doing electrical work including one of the light switch sockets which would be affected by insulating my lounge wall and I am certainly not going to pay again just to have wiring extended in order to fit thicker insulation boards, if I could fit them in, which I cannot due to the doorway.

Also I have a radiator on both walls so I don't think that insulation boards could be fitted anyway because of the weight unless there is a way of supporting them. A stud wall is a no go, so unless there is any other way of fitting insulation boards which will support a radiator then insulation will not be possible. The expense is paramount, it has to be done myself and costs kept very low.

5% of my floorspace would mean around 6 inches of insulation in my lounge before they would permit any increase in the U value and other things such as doorways would be a big problem long before that type of insulation thickness was applied.

You would need about 60mm of celotex to achieve 0.3. which is less than you may have thought.

Doesn't sound a lot but it's too much for my place because of a doorways which are perpendicular to both outside walls of my lounge. One door in my kitchen is similar but slightly worse where there could be very little insulation added, no more than about 25mm inc plasterboard. With the plaster removed 35 to 40mm maybe including the pasterboard which doesn't leave much room for insulation. So 25mm is about the best I could add in my kitchen if I removed the current plaster. Without removing it were talking insulation so thin that they might not even produce it due to it being so ineffective. But thinking about it, I have an Alarm system wiring which the installer put just below the plaster so that would make removing the plaster difficult because boards could not be added flat to the wall. These houses are downright terrible to work on, they are a total nightmare due to the no fines concrete.

60mm is too thick, 25 plus plasterboard is what I had in mind. That would help a small amount and should be fairly inexpensive. But the rear wall again I think 25 total thickness would be all that is possible unless plaster is removed because it is like the kitchen with doors and door frames getting in the way.

knowloads

Not a cheap option but external insulation on random stone has been done in Yorkshire, and the stone copied over with Decopierre type product. Not a DIY option but might be Grant-able. Worth a search I guess. Taking large chunks of living space away has got to be a bind?

A.Penny.Saved

I have looked for any grants for insulation work but I have come up with nothing. There is a company that is supposed to provide help with finding grants and deals on such things but they didn't even bother replying to an email. I will have to phone them to see if that makes a difference.

There are meant to be a very large number of solid walled properties in the UK which must be contributing a fairly significant amount to Co2 output, yet assistance with insulating them is almost none existent. Maybe it's cost, they will pay for cavity wall insulation which offers much less improvement to thermal efficiency yet solid wall properties which would benefit the most are probably too expensive to cover for grants etc.

My local council is planning on adding external insulation to their property next door but they don't want to offer anything to the private properties to assist with improving them. It would mean the homes look similar, rather than having one house being vastly different with protruding walls where the insulation has been added.

External insulation is far too expensive for me to pay for, my budget is very low and would have to be done by myself to keep the costs as low as I can.

These are meant to find grants and offers to help people in the West Midlands - It was these that I used their contact page, which is how they indicated people to contact them, to find out what was available but so far no reply.

Gloomendoom

A.Penny.Saved wrote: »

60mm is too thick, 25 plus plasterboard is what I had in mind.

Have you considered using the thin laminated foil/bubblewrap type insulation?

The manufacturers claim that it is just as efficient as thick foam boards.

sprayer

hi new on this site! has anybody ,wherever they live, applied for and got a grant for insulation for SOLID walls ?We live in an ex council house in the derby area (purchased many years back) i have been on to the council energy saving dept but their response was that it is being looked into maybe a year or so! as A.Penny.Saved said"there are a very large number of SOLID walled houses in the uk , yet assistance is almost none existent"
it would be very much appreciated any comments or being pointed in the right direction