Cavity Wall Insulation Guarantee

chilli32

In 2008 l had my cavity walls insulated on the ECO scheme by Miller Pattison. My local authority, Brighton and Hove has a record of this. I received no guarantee and CIGA has no record of any guarantee. 

My insulation was blown fibre and has since slumped - in places to 1ft . Some room walls never reach above 13 degrees Celsius in winter. I have been advised that it needs to be removed (no provider will top it up) and replaced.

I am now facing a £2000 bill for removal and £1600 for refilling with bead insulation . I cannot afford this.  

If l had not been a good citizen in 2008 and gone ahead with the insulation l would be able to claim on the new ECO plus scheme - l cannot do this as extraction is not funded and my property is deemed as having cavity wall insulation.

I have tried to find out who else might hold my guarantee using details provided by Ofgem - these are however out of date and are deadends- with most of these schemes having gone out of business or being taken over and having no record of any guarantee for me. Miller Pattison have also gone out of business.

What can be done? Do l have to consider selling my home because at some point l won’t be able to afford heating and there is no governmental pathway for me because of the failure of a previous governmental scheme?

MultiFuelBurner

Can you not just bead on top of what is there?

MattMattMattUK

chilli32 said:

In 2008 l had my cavity walls insulated on the ECO scheme by Miller Pattison. My local authority, Brighton and Hove has a record of this. I received no guarantee and CIGA has no record of any guarantee. 

Are you sure there is actually a guarantee? Over what term?

chilli32 said:

My insulation was blown fibre and has since slumped - in places to 1ft . Some room walls never reach above 13 degrees Celsius in winter. 

Are you heating them? Because even a cavity wall without insulation should be more than adequate to keep a room over 13c with normal heating levels. 

chilli32 said:

I have been advised that it needs to be removed (no provider will top it up) and replaced.

Have you spoken to CIGA? They do have recommended remediation suppliers, do they recommend removal first?

chilli32 said:

I am now facing a £2000 bill for removal and £1600 for refilling with bead insulation . I cannot afford this.  

You also have the option to not do the work. 

chilli32 said:

If l had not been a good citizen in 2008 and gone ahead with the insulation l would be able to claim on the new ECO plus scheme - l cannot do this as extraction is not funded and my property is deemed as having cavity wall insulation.

There are lots of situations where we do not get things paid for by the government, I suspect you got cavity wall insulation due to trying to save money on heating costs, rather than any "good citizen" ideology. We cannot expect the taxpayer to fund everything for us.

chilli32 said:

I have tried to find out who else might hold my guarantee using details provided by Ofgem - these are however out of date and are deadends- with most of these schemes having gone out of business or being taken over and having no record of any guarantee for me. Miller Pattison have also gone out of business.

If you do not hold any details of the guarantee, what makes you think the installation was guaranteed and for what period? Whilst CIGA offers 25 year guarantees, those only apply when the installer is registered with them, Miller Pattison were a system designer, not an installer, so if someone installed their product but were not a registered installer with CIGA then there would be no guarantee with CIGA.

chilli32 said:

What can be done? Do l have to consider selling my home because at some point l won’t be able to afford heating and there is no governmental pathway for me because of the failure of a previous governmental scheme?

The first point is, if you cannot afford your home then you generally have to sell it. Not having cavity wall insulation, or having dropped cavity wall insulation, is unlikely to make that much of a difference to your energy bills overall. In a best case scenario the estimates for how much one would save on a detached house by installing cavity wall insulation is between £105 (three bed mid terrace) and £280 (large four bed detached), which is not a huge saving by any measure. It is not the taxpayers job to save you money, even if other people may well be able to obtain that benefit. 

The reality is that cavity wall insulation, failed or not, does not make much difference to energy bills and is certainly unlikely to be a make or break situation in relation to your ongoing costs. 

https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/insulation/article/cavity-wall-insulation/cavity-wall-insulation-costs-and-savings-aME221E0xDYR#cavitywall-insulation-savings

chilli32

They won’t bead on top ….

MattMattMattUK

(Removed by Forum Team)

chilli32 said:

They won’t bead on top ….

However, in theory it should be possible to put more blown fibre on top if anyone still does that. Again, CIGA have remediation specialists as members, they are going to be the ideal ones to speak to if you do want to put new insulation in, however the reality is that either way it will make little difference to your energy bills. 

chilli32

So I don’t really want a big debate about efficacy - there are lots of academic analyses and trials that support CWI .Miller Pattison did. use CIGA - please see this extract from Hansard https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2020-03-16/debates/93D5634A-A6E6-4D21-8D6E-2BF344D45883/CavityWallInsulationComplaints

As to my motivation … what can l say - the original job was charged for - at the time I didn’t qualify …l want know if anyone out there had a similar experience and what they managed to do about it

ArbitraryRandom

I think your best bet is to contact the installers (which is not Pattison) and ask them for details of any guarantee. The council might have a contact on their documentation for building control. 

If there is a guarantee then there will be a mechanism for remedy. 

If there is no guarantee then you can try to argue the work was defective with the installers to get them to remedy it - if that fails then Matt has told you about the remediation specialists who can look at and advise what needs to be done. 

If you have no joy with the installers, feel the work was defective, and (key) you can get an expert to report to that effect, then you could try the small claims court (allowing the limit for a claim is £10k) - this would be against the installers.

If you can't track down the installers (then that should have been a red flag, so next time take a picture of their van or ask for details and check them out on companies house), then unfortunately you will need to either live with or pay out of pocket for fixing the issue.

(For what it's worth, I agree with Matt that a house without cavity wall insulation should be able to maintain a temp of above 13 if appropriately heated - insulation keeps heat in, it doesn't create it... so you do need to actually still use the heating). 

FreeBear

MattMattMattUK said:

chilli32 said:

My insulation was blown fibre and has since slumped - in places to 1ft . Some room walls never reach above 13 degrees Celsius in winter. 

Are you heating them? Because even a cavity wall without insulation should be more than adequate to keep a room over 13c with normal heating levels.

As long as the heating system has been designed & installed to take in to account total heat loss of each room. No point in using a 1KW fan heater in a large room with single glazed windows..

As a starting point, play with this online calculator - https://www.stelrad.com/basic-heat-loss-calculator/ - See what radiator sizes it recommends, and compare it to what you have now. If you are electric only, convert the BTU recommendations to KW (BTU/3414 = KW).

If your heating is appropriately sized and you still can't get the temperature above 13°C (you are running the heating for long enough ?), then you are losing a lot of heat somewhere. Cold draughts around windows/doors/skirting are common sources. Open chimneys, another. Go round plugging al the draughts, and it should get easier to heat the house.