Heating my home without gas

skyela

Thanks for all of your replies! I'll definitely have to reread them too later. 

Unfortunately, I'm not a millionaire 🤣 and my dream would be to knock it down and start again but I do not have the means to do that.. 

Ok, so yes, it is a timber framed bungalow, with a single skin brick wall round it. I have insulated two of the main rooms with celotex (not that I can feel the difference🥶). 

Loft is insulated with fluff, although I'm sure more could be added and quite cheaply. 
Are we talking to insulate from the outside too? That's not a bad idea, I know timber has gone up the last few years but it's got to be worth it? 

Thanks everyone 🙂

Verdigris

You want 300mm of loft insulation, ideally.

I don't quite understand the construction. You said it was solid wall, originally. Now you're saying it is timber frame.

QrizB

skyela said:

Ok, so yes, it is a timber framed bungalow, with a single skin brick wall round it. I have insulated two of the main rooms with celotex (not that I can feel the difference🥶).

and

Verdigris said:

I don't quite understand the construction

Me neither.

@skyela do you know the approximate age of your bungalow? When you said single-skin brick I imagined something 19th-century but now I'm thinking it might be much newer than that?

markin

Timber frame with brick face, 60's  or 70's ?

External insulation is just screwed direct to the outside and then rendered. You already have the internal timber frame but was it insulated?

Are you putting the celotex in the wall or on top and how thick?

ProDave

I was not suggesting the OP knocks his house down to rebuild it himself, but rather if he got planning permission to replace it with a larger building, and even better if he could get permission for 2 houses if it was a large plot, then he might well find it was worth more as development land than a small cold uninviting bungalow,. and would be an ideal opportunity to make the most of it's value and move on to a better warmer cheaper to run modern house.

But timber frame and brick outer is quite normal construction (at least here in Scotland) so it does have a lot of scope for improving if the rest of the structure is sound.  Chances are there is no insulation in the timber frame.  So to do it properly would be strip all the plasterboard off the walls, properly seal any leaks in the structure and insulate the timber frame, then further PIR type insulation across the face of the frame before new plasterboard, taking care to seal the insulation sheets to make it air tight.  A lot of work but could be done a room at a time if you need to stay resisdent.

As I keep saying, somehow this has got to happen to almost all the UK's housing sooner or later unless you are going to ignore global warming, the need to reduce or eliminate CO2 and rising energy prices.