Advice please on cavity wall insulation using polystyrene beads

Andrea115

Hi All,
I was flooded in February and am now back in my bungalow.
I have noticed mould on my shoes which are kept in my new sliding wardrobes.
I was advised to have cavity wall insulation. However due to risk of flooding, I was advised to go for the beads, so water will flow through and not be transferred to the inner skin. However if the beads are now bonded with glue, will this act as a medium for transferring the water to the inner skin.
All advice would be greatfully received

John_Pierpoint

I built a dividing wall inside my bungalow over an Easter weekend using a stack of bricks I got delivered for free - these bricks had stood outside all winter and had got soaked by rainfall and it rained all weekend as I built the wall indoors.

That wall was only 4 inches thick (100mm) and was plaster pretty prompt;y with light weight plaster. I then placed a sideboard in front of one side of it , the other side being just a normal wall in a bedroom. Through the summer and autumn all appeared normal BUT during the following winter mold grew on the back of the sideboard.

I washed it off in the spring and it has never come back.

Now I don't know how your your property was constructed but when the flood went down a traditional property could contain tons of water.

Traditional builders would say that this could take 18 months to 3 years to completely dry out. Modern homes built with almost dry materials and then warped by central heating do not suffer this problem when built; but.when flooded with water might well soak up more than historical homes.

By the way shoes tend to be hygroscopic - ie they tend to suck water out of the atmosphere, where it then meets up with salt and proteins from the sweat of the user, just the conditions for growing mould.
Probably not a good idea to store shoes in a cupboard, especially if its on an outside wall.

Do you open the windows and ventilate your rooms, especially the bedrooms, for 5 - 10 minutes a day? Most people don't, but it was standard practice to strip the bed and throw open the windows, then have breakfast, when I was dragged up in the 1950s.

anmol77

thanks for sharing this
Ragga mentions damp near eaves after insulation. A likely cause is that the wall was not insulated right to the top; this will allow any penetrating rain to move down the inner surface of the outer leaf until it reaches the top of the insulation. The insulation material is chosen to be water repellent, so water will collect on top of it and thus wet the inner leaf creating a line of damp. The cure is to add more insulation to bring it right up to the eaves which are kept dry by roof overhang....

dominoman

Anmol just copying a previous answer, and on a 5 year old post.

Canned ham alert! Ban him please.