Home Insulation

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,092
Location
Stoke area
Hi all,

We already have attic insulation but its not thick enough, we also need cavity wall insulation so I've been looking around at suppliers etc. The prices seem to vary greatly, and we all know that the cheapest isn't always the best and the most expensive doesn't guarantee a good job.

Thought I'd ask here if anyone has had either of these done, how much it cost and on what type of property.

Our property is a 3 bed semi detached.

It's all part of my energy saving and money saving change :)
 
Look into Grants that you may or may not be able to get from your Local Authorities before you go paying for this sort of stuff.
 
energy companies do cheap roof insulation offers,
I bought a shed load of fibreglass rolls for a few quid (delivered)

I can't remember the exact price but it was a lot less than the DIY stores,
have a look on hotukdeals for more info
 
B&Q usually have offers, that are comparable to the energy suppliers offers (so don't write them off just yet).

I got 30 rolls for the house at £3 a roll (200mm) which was slightly cheaper than the npower offer at the time :)
 
I'll be doing ours in the new year. I need some which will go between joists and some blankets to go over the top. ideally i'd use some Celotex or something but its just so damned expensive.

Our place already has cavity insulation but it feels like cotton wool kind of material. I have no idea how good it actually is but the place seems to stay fairly warm.

Just looking at the Npower offer. £57 to take our loft from 0mm (its actualyl 100mm but shhhh) upto 270mm. Thats really not bad at all.

EDIT: I just ordered it from the nPower deal. I ordered enough to take out all the old stuff which is probably on average about 7mm thick now and doesn't cover the whole loft and replace it with all new and all over. Not bad at all for £57 delivered.
 
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what you need to check is the exact type of insulation that they will be using, generally all the council backed ones will be the most basic basic insulation.
Once you know what insulation they are planning to install it will make it easier to see exactly how much they are charging for the fitting, but until you look into the details it's hard to see where the price differences are...
 
I just finished insulating my mum's loft for her.

Cost me £28 for 100 m2 of 270mm from a popular DIY retailer. Heavily subsidised by EON energy I think.

Was pretty easy easy to install apart from me or my brother busting the cold water feed for the bathrooms and having to re-plumb and re-sheet part of the ceiling too :o

If you dont have a whole lot of headroom in your loft then I advise getting a contortionist or small child to help as I almost ended myself a few times crawling around up there.

My mum had 2 companies come out and give her quotes but both of them refused because the headroom was not big enough. Approx 1.5m at its tallest. :mad:
 
Admiral Huddy said:
+1

Done our 4 bed detached in the summer. No mess clean and seems to be doing the job. Cost me £100 iirc. The rest they sorted under the government grant scheme.
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What stops the damp being transferred through the polystyrene beads?
 
EVH said:
What stops the damp being transferred through the polystyrene beads?
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polystyrene doesn't absorb any water so i'm not sure how the water would transfer horizontally across a gap. If any water got into the cavity it should just head down.
 
Thanks for all the info, I've popped an email over to miller-patterson for grant info in my area and i'll be checking prices out to do the loft myself.

Only problem with the loft is that I would like to use it for storage as well, and with the recommended amount of insulation i'd have to raise the floor with beams and then board it. The result make make it more expensive than insulating the the actual roof and flooring leaving the current attic floor insulation as it is :S

Popping down the charity shop tomorrow as well, I've been told they've loads of bed sheets made from thick cotton, will be taking the curtains down and sewing these on as an extra bit of insulation :)
 
I'm looking into doing this at the moment, my old house has the bare minimum insulation in it and I notice in the evenings as soon as the heating goes off, it gets very cold very quickly. Trouble is, I need to clear a lot of stuff out of the loft first that the old owners left in there. Might just crack on with it tomorrow and see what I can do..
 
Street said:
I'm looking into doing this at the moment, my old house has the bare minimum insulation in it and I notice in the evenings as soon as the heating goes off, it gets very cold very quickly. Trouble is, I need to clear a lot of stuff out of the loft first that the old owners left in there. Might just crack on with it tomorrow and see what I can do..
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As far as I am aware owners are supposed to empty the house and loft of anything before they vacate the premises. our loft had a few old doors and a long bit of aluminium vent so it wan't so bad.

The problem is most people use the loft to store crap they are too soft to throw away despite not ever wanting. i'm a bit of a scrooge in that regard and get rid of anything i don't need. I'd rather have to buy a new one in 5 years than sod about looking for one in the one you kept along with the Pencil from Aunt Joane's trip to Lourdes and everything else you didn't chuck out.

our loft has 4 suitcases in and one box of sentimental stuff. One suitcases has all my photography boxes in (because only an idiot throws away SLR boxes) and one of the others has the xmas deccs in. The only other thing up there is the xmas tree.
 
pretty much that's all we will want to store in there, luggage, boxes of all the electrical goods and my camera gear and xmas stuff. Then in the future maybe the kids things.

Once all the insulation is done, curtains backed and curtains for the doors, I am going to have a bash at making some water heating solar panels and monitoring the electrical goods in the house.

****** also do a plug in electricity cost and usage calculator for £8 so I will be getting one of those. Then start working out what things cost to run, what can be turned off and what should be left on etc. Got to check out energy saving bulbs too, Morrisons have their own branded cheap ones but not sure on the quality yet.

Spend money to save money.
 
AHarvey said:
pretty much that's all we will want to store in there, luggage, boxes of all the electrical goods and my camera gear and xmas stuff. Then in the future maybe the kids things.

Once all the insulation is done, curtains backed and curtains for the doors, I am going to have a bash at making some water heating solar panels and monitoring the electrical goods in the house.

****** also do a plug in electricity cost and usage calculator for £8 so I will be getting one of those. Then start working out what things cost to run, what can be turned off and what should be left on etc. Got to check out energy saving bulbs too, Morrisons have their own branded cheap ones but not sure on the quality yet.

Spend money to save money.
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If i had the money to get solar panels then it would be photovoltaic ones and not ones for hot water. My spark dropped off a file about a new govt scheme whereby the leccy board have to give you a better rate of return on any leccy you pump into the grid so that instead of taking 20 years to pay off the system it ends up taking like 7. In an ideal world if my roof needed replacing i'd replace it entirely with solar panels which you can get like tiles which slot together.

Solar panels are developing fairly fast now though so in a fwe years hopefully they will be cheaper and more efficient.

As for energy saving bulbs. I've found thaat anything other than Phillips ones are just not worth it. The cheapo Ikea or supermarket ones are cheap for a reason.
 
If i had the money i'd get both hot water and electric panels, however, I've got a few resources on making your own water panels and lots of spare material knocking about so will give it a go :) Plus, i think the average houses uses 52% of its energy just heating the house, so in theory, I could cut my gas bill down nearly completely :)

I've also read a few accounts of some companies fitting electric panels for free, but then they claim back the money from the power companies. Not sure how true it is but it's something I will be looking in to :)
 
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