Have I got Cavity wall insulation?

olbas_oil

How can you tell if you already have cavity wall insulation? The house was built in 1984. Would it have been common/compulsory then?
It's a 4 bed detached house- built in part of the garden of a larger house, so no similar houses to compare notes with.
Are there any tell tale signs, or would I have to get a surveyor round?

macman

Drill a pilot hole from the outside into the cavity through a mortar joint and see what you find.

Ebe_Scrooge

You could drill a hole as suggested above, but you should be able to get away without doing that. If you look carefully at your outside wall, you should be able to see where they drilled the holes to inject the insulation, then filled them with mortar. There will be quite a few holes at regular intervals.

Any decent installer will try their best to match the mortar they use to re-fill the holes with whatever colour is already there, in an attempt to make it look nice, but with the best will in the world you'll never get an exact match and you can usually see the blobs of new mortar if you look closely.

If you can see this grid of filled-in holes, odds on it's been insulated.

<edit> this only applies if the insulation was done after the house was built. If the house was built with insulation in the first place then you'll have to go down the route of drilling a pilot hole.

maninthestreet

When was the house built?

ginvzt

maninthestreet wrote: »

When was the house built?

The answer is in the first post...

olbas_oil wrote: »

The house was built in 1984.

Tucker

If you are asking if it was built with cavity insulation, I would say very unlikely from that era.

It certainly was not compulsary under Building Regs in 1984. My house was built 1991 and did not have it, so if it was put in, it was someone going the extra mile.

ginvzt

Our house was built 1987. The original details provided by the builder specify that cavity walls are insulated. Cannot confirm if that is true though.

The builder was Fairclough Homes.