Are you losing heat due to poor or no insulation?

Too many homes in the UK are poorly insulated, meaning heat (and money) is constantly escaping from your home. Insulating your home will help cut your heating bills, reduce noise and carbon footprint. Plus improve the comfort of your interior spaces.

If your home was built before the 1920s, its external walls are probably solid walls rather than cavity walls.

• Solid walls have no gap, so they can't be filled with cavity wall insulation.
• Cavity walls are made of two layers with a small gap or 'cavity' between them.

Solid walls can be insulated though - either from the inside or the outside. This will cost more than insulating a standard cavity wall, but the savings on your heating bills will be greater too.

Work out your wall type

If you have solid walls, then they're almost certainly not insulated - but the first thing you need to find out is what sort of walls you have.

If you can see the brickwork on the outside of the house, look at the pattern of the bricks as this can show how the wall has been constructed.

Solid Wall

If you home has solid walls, the bricks will have an alternating pattern, with some bricks laid across the wall so you can see the smaller ends from the outside.

Cavity Wall

If your home has cavity walls, the bricks will usually have an even pattern with all the bricks laid lengthways.

If the brickwork has been covered, you can also tell by measuring the width of the wall. Examine a window or door on one of your external walls. If a brick wall is greater than 260mm then the wall is likely to be a cavity wall. A narrower wall is most likely a solid wall.

If you live in a house that has a non-traditional construction such as a concrete, steel or timber-framed building, you will need a specialist installer with insulating experience to identify and advise you on your insulation options.
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Solid Wall Insulation

External Wall Insulation

External Wall insulation involves fixing a layer of insulation material to the wall, the covering it with a special type of render (plasterwork) or cladding.

The finish can be smooth, textured, painted, tiled, panelled, pebble-dashed, or finished with brick slips.

External insulation:

• can be applied without disruption to the household does not reduce the floor area of your home.
• will renew the appearance of outer walls.
• will improve weatherproofing and sound resistance.
• fill in cracks and gaps in the brickwork, which will reduce draughts.
• increases the lifespan of your walls by protecting the brickwork.
• reduces condensation on internal walls and can help prevent damp (but will not solve rising or penetration damp).
• best installed at the same time as external refurbishment work to reduce the cost.
• may need planning permission - check with your local council.
• requires good access to the outer walls.

Internal Wall Insulation

Internal wall insulation is done by fitting rigid insulation boards to the wall, or by building a stud wall filled in with insulation material such as mineral wool fibre.

Internal insulation:

• is generally cheaper to install than external wall insulation.
• will slightly reduce the floor area of any rooms in which it is applied (the thickness of the insulation is around 100mm).
• can be quite disruptive, but can be done room by room.
• requires skirting boards, door frames and external fittings to be removed and reattached.
• can make it hard to fix heavy items to inside walls - although special fixings are available.
• cannot be done before fixing any problems with penetrating or rising damp.

Cavity wall Insulation

Many cavity walls can be insulated by injecting insulation material into the cavity from the outside. A specialist company will drill holes in the outside walls, inject insulation through the holes and then seal them with cement. The insulation material is usually either mineral wool or polystyrene beads, but polyurethane foam may sometimes be used instead.

To insulate your cavity walls, the installer drills small holes around 22mm in size at intervals of around 1m in the outside wall of your home. The installer then blows insulation into the cavity using special equipment. Once all the insulation is in, the installer fills the holes in the brickwork so you’ll barely notice them.

Filling cavity walls is not a job you can do yourself, you will need to employ a registered installer. A professional can do the job in around two hours for an average house with easily accessible walls. It shouldn’t make any mess.