Insulating Your Walls – What are the Benefits?
A quick guide to the walls of your home and the common types of insulation available
With energy bills rising and further price increases on the horizon throughout 2022, it’s a great time to think about ways to keep your home warmer and helping to keep your heating bills as low as possible. One of the best ways to start doing this is through properly insulating the walls of your home.
The first step to this is identifying what kind of insulation your home has, and what might be needed to bring it up to the best standards. In this blog we’ll take a look at the main ways to insulate the walls of your home and give a quick overview on the benefits as well as some of the drawbacks of different insulation types.
Cavity Wall Insulation
It is most important to first identify if cavity wall insulation is appropriate for your property. If your home was built after the 1920s, there is a good chance you have cavity walls. There a few ways to check the type of walls you have, but the most simple way is to have a look at the pattern of the bricks. Cavity walls will typically have an even pattern with all the bricks going lengthways which means the bricks should all appear the same size when looking at the wall.
An additional way to figure out if you have cavity walls is if your loft is safely accessible, you’ll be able to spot if theirs is a void present in the wall (the cavity). If you’re still not sure or you want additional confirmation that your home requires cavity wall insulation, contacting a registered installer for an inspection would be the best way to go about it.
Cavity Walls Typically have an even brick pattern with all the bricks going lengthways
The benefits of investing in cavity wall insulation are that not only will your home be kept warmer, but you’ll also save on your heating bills. Using energy prices from November 2021 this could save up to £185 a year for a semi-detached home, and as much as £310 a year for a detached home. Once fuel price figures for April 2022 onwards are finalised then these savings will further increase due to the rising fuel costs.
As a certified installer we provide CIGA guarantees for all works carried out, this ensures you have peace of mind about the work for years to come.
Solid Wall Insulation
It is likely that if you have solid walls they may not be insulated. As there is no cavity to be able to fill with insulation material this makes cavity wall insulation impossible leaving you with two main options to insulate your walls. Solid Wall Insulation covers any insulation that will be applied to brick, concrete or even in rare cases, stone walls.
There are two main methods of insulating solid walls which will be explained in more detail below.
External Wall Insulation
As the name suggests this type of insulation is applied to the outside of your property on all the elevations to keep the heat from leaving your property. Most commonly this is done through applying Expanded Polystyrene Boards (EPS) to the property and applying a render coat on top to finish.
A big advantage of external wall insulation is that in addition to keeping your home warmer and reducing the energy required for heating, it also gives the opportunity to greatly improve the appearance of your property.
As an installer that works with several material manufacturers, we have a wide range of colours and appearances available for our EWI installations. Get in touch to find out more.
Completed External Wall Insulation
Internal Wall Insulation
Internal Wall Insulation is an alternative to insulating solid walls effectively. Some properties may not be suitable for External Wall Insulation or may be unable to have EWI installed (for example properties that are in a conservation area) and IWI is ideal if this is the case.
One advantage of IWI is that it is generally cheaper than insulating externally and does not require scaffold. There are, however, some important things to consider:
- All the walls that have outside faces in the property will need to be cleared to be able to insulate the property correctly which can cause a lot of disruption, especially in kitchens and bathrooms where fixtures may have to be removed and replaced
- The insulation boards are applied inside the property which takes up space, this means the floor area of the property will decrease slightly after the insulation has been fitted
How we can help
As a qualified Trustmark installer, we’re experienced in a wide range of insulation and have worked on hundreds of properties over our years of trading. If you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do to help improve your property or if you’re interested in getting a quote then get in touch and our team will be on hand to assist.
