Government home insulation scheme

Flimbyite

I live in a late eighties built semi detached house with cavity walls. I applied through British Gas for the insulation scheme.
Received a call today from Effective Home to talk about what was available. The guy said that I could get cavity wall insulation installed for free but if I wanted loft insulation they would charge me £1400.
I have been through something similar in the past where a company came and supposedly injected cavity wall insulation and when I checked it there was a small amount in the bottom of my cavity.
I think £1400 is quite a large contribution to make and wasn’t keen on being made to go down the cavity wall route. Is cavity wall insulation much more cost effective than good loft insulation?
Are there no risks of getting damp in my house if I go for cavity insulation as I have heard horror stories about people getting damp problems?
Thanks

FrankFalcon

200mm loft insulation today is £23 a roll at B&Q. 100mm is a pound less. Not knowing the size of your house let’s say you need 5 rolls of each. The cost is less than £230. 

Do the maths. 

jcrooke

Issues will be with the funding scheme there using, (imagine it will be the Great British Insulation Scheme). It has to be installed to PAS2019 standards via the scheme which adds a lot of cost to the install process due to ventilation improvements mandated, and qualified Retrofit Assessors and Retrofit Co-ordinators being involved in the process. Its a bit over the top for a bit of a loft top up. Under they scheme they can only install one insulation measure not 2. You could Try another scheme called Connected for Warmth (Google it), which if available in your area maybe better ref funding and should be FOC. 

The GBIS scheme is based on a points scoring system based on your EPC rating and property Size. Loft insulation generally saves less than CWI Insulation so on the scheme the installer will receive far less funding for loft than CWI works and hence the large contribution needed which is pushed up by 60% due to PAS compliance costs.  To be honest if you don't fancy the job yourself, you could just  get a quote from a local installer, I would imagine it would be far less than the £1400 quoted via the scheme. The scheme may well change in the new year (April) so it may work better then (but don't count on it), but I would expect you would find someone to do it on a semi home for less than £700 maybe less.

onomatopoeia99

Installing loft insulation is a zero skill job, so providing that you can afford to buy the materials and know how to use a pair of scissors or a stanley knife you can do it yourself a lot cheaper. 

I have a limiting disability and despite that I did my bungalow by myself, which being a bungalow obviously needs at least double the amount insulation of an equivalent area house.  Using Wickes prices and coverage it would cost me about £700 for the materials today.  However, it took several weekends of work and trips to the tip in my van to clear out the loft before it was suitable to put insulation down, due to the old polystyrene chips type insulation (useless at insulating and time consuming to remove) and various rubbish the previous owners had left up there. 

Once done it was effective at keeping the heat in.

Chickereeeee

FrankFalcon said:

200mm loft insulation today is £23 a roll at B&Q. 100mm is a pound less. Not knowing the size of your house let’s say you need 5 rolls of each. The cost is less than £230. 

Do the maths. 

To be clear before you do the maths,, you can cover half the area with 200mm insulation, compared to 100mm, for those prices....

I.e. it costs twice the amount to cover the loft with 200mm compared to 100mm insulation, so more like £450 for 5 + 10 rolls.

Ganga

Do not forget if you do it yourself to use PPE ,overalls, gloves and possibly face covering and mask