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Insulate Britain

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Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 22 Sep 2021, 15:12

This is not a political post so don’t turn it into one.

IMHO if you over insulate, ie block up every conceivable gap, what about condensation build up and what about ventilation for combustion.
Also some of the payback times are donkey’s years and I sometimes wonder if these even take into account of the fact that at least half of the year there is no heating on so the various systems are “idling “.

Loft insulation is a no brainier, but I am sceptical about the rest unless it’s part of a rebuild.

Interested in what others think.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Malc2098 » 22 Sep 2021, 15:43

Way back in the 80s, I had the cavities of my 3 bed semi near High Wycombe filled with rockwool. It was completed on Christmas Eve. The difference was noticeable instantly. The CH thermostat had to be lowered that night.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 22 Sep 2021, 16:20

Malc2098 wrote:Way back in the 80s, I had the cavities of my 3 bed semi near High Wycombe filled with rockwool. It was completed on Christmas Eve. The difference was noticeable instantly. The CH thermostat had to be lowered that night.


That doesn't make sense. The thermostat was measuring the room temperature that it was set at, irrespective of heat input and heat loss.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby novocaine » 22 Sep 2021, 16:52

I paid 3k 2 years ago to have incorreclty installed cavity wall insulation removed because the warranty didnt cover removal due permeable brick apparantly. The house became warmer and the damp issue disappeared as there was no longer a bridge between the leafs.

Im fine with it on a new build with .modern bricks and a cavity between the 2 leafs still (as our extension is) Otherwise it was a massive con akin to injection damp proofing, there may have been reputable installers, but their were considerble more cowboys who'd take your money and run.
Loft insulation is a no brainer, as is decent windows, but old houses were designed around ventilation and sealing them up is a short term gain for a long term loss.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby MattS » 22 Sep 2021, 17:00

It's a massive issue to solve. No viable alternative to gas at scale and current housing stock needs a lot of heat due to low insulation.

One thing I am certain on, I see no reason why we are still building brick houses with a cavity, modern houses should be built using better techniques. I have a big interest in sustainable building, another thing to consider is the materials we use, our building industry is so reliant on cement and gypsum both of which are bad materials.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Woodster » 22 Sep 2021, 17:41

It’s a interesting topic. A TV series called “House for the Future” aired in the UK in 1976 and I found it very interesting. Even back then the importance of good insulation was well recognised. Scandinavian countries in particular were given as an example. Many houses in Sweden where the temperature regularly gets down to minus 25c didn’t even have central heating so the programme said, they just had small electric heaters in the bedrooms if it got really cold. I’m not a scientist but I’ve seen it stated several times that if we used proper insulation in new builds together with triple glazing we wouldn’t need conventional gas boilers as it simply doesn’t get cold enough in the UK to warrant them? So it seems we still don’t insulate properly in the UK? Is the cost of insulation really that prohibitive these days - I’ve never bought any. How high do gas prices need to go to make it more attractive?

As an alternative to using gas I happened to see this the other day so I guess they do need heating in those countries after all!?

https://energymonitor.ai/sector/heating ... -in-europe

Even with the Internet, finding the truth these days is getting harder. I do know though that if it’s cold outside putting a coat on keeps me warmer. ;)
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby AJB Temple » 22 Sep 2021, 17:55

It's an interesting one. We live in what is mainly an old barn, which was converted by someone else, not brilliantly well, 40 years ago. I have added a very large kitchen with a lot of glazing on the south side, a large larder and side kitchen room, and an oak framed music room. All three of these exceed by a considerable margin the current requirements for building regs wrt insulation. To get anywhere close to this in the rest of the old house, apart from the lofts, would be nigh on impossible whatever the insulation protesters think. It would require me to add another skin to the outside of the house (with difficulties in roof overhangs), or to the inside - easier but we lose a lot of room space.

To get older houses up to modern standards, let alone passive house low energy consumption standards, is a very difficult, extremely expensive and impractical job in many cases.

I've not really followed the protests but I think they relate mainly to social housing. I can't see fundamental change happening as social housing is typically council or housing association owned, and they have little incentive to do upgrades. We should focus on far better designs for new builds but planning and regs tend to establish a lowest common denominator rather than standards to aspire to.

Modern factory panel building methods lend themselves to high levels of insulation, but this is not the cheapest way to build.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Malc2098 » 22 Sep 2021, 18:20

Malc2098 wrote:Way back in the 80s, I had the cavities of my 3 bed semi near High Wycombe filled with rockwool. It was completed on Christmas Eve. The difference was noticeable instantly. The CH thermostat had to be lowered that night.



Take it up with my ex-wife. :D I just checked with her that we felt a difference that night, and that's what she said.

The house was a late 60s semi. No question, we used the CH much less after it was installed.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby AndyT » 22 Sep 2021, 18:27

Lurker, I share your concern. Just sealing up old houses without adding a proper ventilation system is a recipe for condensation and mould. I do hope we don't get ill-planned schemes that will make things worse.

Coincidentally, Roger Bisby published a rant about this a few days ago on his YT channel. He linked to this blog, which I've not read yet, which explains what good practice and Passiv Haus building do to control ventilation in well insulated and air controlled houses:

https://elrondburrell.com/blog/passivha ... struction/

Looks worth reading.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Phil Pascoe » 22 Sep 2021, 18:32

Malc2098 wrote:
Malc2098 wrote:Way back in the 80s, I had the cavities of my 3 bed semi near High Wycombe filled with rockwool. It was completed on Christmas Eve. The difference was noticeable instantly. The CH thermostat had to be lowered that night.



Take it up with my ex-wife. :D I just checked with her that we felt a difference that night, and that's what she said.

The house was a late 60s semi. No question, we used the CH much less after it was installed.


As you would - but altering a thermostat had nothing to do with it. :) The boiler just wouldn't run for as long.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Trevanion » 22 Sep 2021, 20:09

Built an outdoor room this year which has 5" celotex in the floor, walls, and ceiling with double glazed bi-folding doors on one side and end. No word of a lie, one person just breathing in there with everything shut is enough to make the room uncomfortably warm, installing a gas fire was a mistake :lol:

I think some of IB's points make sense, but others are outright unfeasible. But it isn't like the government isn't doing anything about the problem, there have been grants for years to insulate eligible homes and even retrofit a complete central heating system, someone I know recently had all the above done completely free of charge as they had no insulation and were heating with a coal-fired AGA. The only realistic way to achieve IB's goal of making all homes thermally efficient would be to knock down something in the region of 10-million homes and rebuild them better, which would cost the country trillions!

My main concern is that while they're prancing about on the motorway they're going to come across the one fella who's having a bad day as it is who might feel his foot getting heavier (as we've seen other times with protesters in France, the USA, India, and so on...), it would be a shame for someone to end up as a mile-long smear on the motorway over something quite silly really.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby MattS » 22 Sep 2021, 20:26

Trevanion wrote:it would be a shame for someone to end up as a mile-long smear on the motorway over something quite silly really.


I think they’d say and I’d agree that we have gone spectacularly beyond it being a bit silly and we’ll into the collapse of nature, mass extinction and conflict as a result of climate change. A few grants isn’t enough
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 22 Sep 2021, 20:56

Come on chaps I did ask to keep it non political.

Can we stick to the practicalities and the pros and cons of insulation.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby sunnybob » 22 Sep 2021, 21:33

Malc2098 wrote:
Malc2098 wrote:Way back in the 80s, I had the cavities of my 3 bed semi near High Wycombe filled with rockwool. It was completed on Christmas Eve. The difference was noticeable instantly. The CH thermostat had to be lowered that night.



Take it up with my ex-wife. :D I just checked with her that we felt a difference that night, and that's what she said.

The house was a late 60s semi. No question, we used the CH much less after it was installed.


Quite feasible.
If the heat loss through the walls was great enough, the boiler would never be able to get the room temp up to the stat setting. Once the insulation was installed, for the first time ever, you actually got the set temp, which turned out to be too hot. Reducing the stat made the room temp actually match the set temp.

I had my 60's brick built 3 bed semi rockwool insulated in the late 70's. It made a tremendous difference. With 2 young children to look after the house was warm and pleasant with only a wall mounted gas fire down stairs, and a single flame wall mounted gas heater on the upstairs landing.

A 5 bed detached I owned in the early 2000s, I had polystyrene beads used on the one long brick wall. But I did install C/H in that one.

Out here, the houses are concrete reinforced shells, with clay block walls cemented over. but Cyprus has now upped the ante and all houses occupied for the first time must be fitted with blue celotex wall panels on the outsides, which is them cemented over again.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby RogerS » 22 Sep 2021, 21:53

The ONE person on this forum who is qualified to talk about this is MikeG.

Old housing stock does not lend itself to becoming more energy efficient. Despite what the pond scum (question...are they related to KDOS ?) with their vanity project think.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Andyp » 22 Sep 2021, 21:59

How much of it is too old for retrospective insulation I wonder.

I also wonder why the, possibly, thousands of acres of rooves on public buildings are not covered in some sort of solar energy devices.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Trevanion » 23 Sep 2021, 00:12

MattS wrote:
Trevanion wrote:it would be a shame for someone to end up as a mile-long smear on the motorway over something quite silly really.


I think they’d say and I’d agree that we have gone spectacularly beyond it being a bit silly and we’ll into the collapse of nature, mass extinction and conflict as a result of climate change. A few grants isn’t enough


Sorry, I think you might've misinterpreted what I meant by "over something quite silly".

I think climate change and conservation are very important issues and we should be doing more to protect what we've got here, what I think is silly is extreme acts such as gluing yourself to the road. It does the cause no favours and creates more animosity, and as I said, someone is going to get killed with the road rage and whacky driving maneuvers to go around the protesters I've seen in some videos, and I think people have every right to be miffed at protesters.

Anyway, back to insulation...

Our front room is in the older part of the house (I'm not quite sure how old exactly the old part is, supposedly it dates from the Georgian era) which has slate walls that are about 2-3ft thick, the outside wall was always bloody freezing in the winter so a few years ago we ripped the plasterboard that was dot and dabbed onto the slate off and studded it out and put some Celotex in the studding, it made a massive difference to the temperature of the room and it didn't require half as much heat to keep warm. Fortunately, the room was large enough you didn't feel like you lost loads of space but you definitely lost a fair amount so this would be a non-starter for some homes.

Another thing as a joiner that bugs me it that the heritage trusts in charge of the listed buildings are absolutely dead-set on keeping them as thermally inefficient as possible. We'll be doing a job soon for a grade 2 listed building that needs to be single-glazed throughout, now, the building is nothing special and is really a glorified cow-shed in appearance and there have been several iterations of windows installed over the years from the original sliding sashes that are lifted manually and pegged in place rather than weight balanced, to very modern 1980s Jeldwen-style windows, but they are insistent on replicating the original single glazed ones. If you were to put a double glazed window in the exact same style as the originals next to the originals, barely anyone is going to notice the difference, especially with the newer 12mm slimline units and soon the 6mm vacuum units. I appreciate that we don't want to be putting aluminium or PVC windows in a 300-year-old house, but we can improve the building's viability as an efficient home while still being sympathetic to it's original appearance with very little to no visual difference.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby PAC1 » 23 Sep 2021, 07:34

Trevanion wrote:

Another thing as a joiner that bugs me it that the heritage trusts in charge of the listed buildings are absolutely dead-set on keeping them as thermally inefficient as possible.

There is an English Heritage guide on energy efficiency in old buildings and listed buildings. It is excellent. It advocates for insulation and shutters or double glazing. The issue they say is to identify the elements of the listing that warranted the listing and then look at upgrading as long as it does not fundamentally undermine those elements.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 23 Sep 2021, 08:04

Lurker wrote:
Malc2098 wrote:Way back in the 80s, I had the cavities of my 3 bed semi near High Wycombe filled with rockwool. It was completed on Christmas Eve. The difference was noticeable instantly. The CH thermostat had to be lowered that night.


That doesn't make sense. The thermostat was measuring the room temperature that it was set at, irrespective of heat input and heat loss.


It does make sense, Jim.

Room thermostats are a switch for automatically turning the heating on. Human perception of comfort isn't just about the air temperature, but about whether the air is moving or not, and whether there are temperature differences in a room (draughts). A still room at 21 Celcius feels a lot warmer than a draughty room which is at the same temperature. We naturally adjust the thermostat to allow for draughts, so a draughty room will have the thermostat set higher than a non-draughty one. Insulation can reduce draughts not just by blocking up gaps which shouldn't be there, but by increasing the temperature of the inner faces of external walls. If all the surfaces in a room are nearer to the average in the room, then eddies aren't set up, because there will be less air cooled by cold surfaces.

Insulation should never be looked at in isolation from ventilation. Sealing and insulating a house is no problem at all (it's a huge bonus, actually) so long as ventilation is properly allowed for. What you are really doing is swapping uncontrolled incidental ventilation (draughts) for well controlled ventilation. The ideal, and something I have fitted to every project I've been invovled in for the last 25 years, is mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, which simply means that there is a constant turn-over of air in the building, but that the incoming fresh air is pre-warmed using the heat taken from the outgoing stale air. It produces the most pleasant indoor environment imaginable, where there is never any condensation and no stale smells. Accompanied by proper levels of insulation and decent glazing, such a house can have heating bills under £100 annually.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby AndyT » 23 Sep 2021, 08:11

Thanks Mike. The gap in my experience is what that "mechanical ventilation with heat recovery" system looks like. If it needs ducts and grilles in every room, leading to a central unit in the loft, is it possible to retrofit into say, millions of small Victorian terraced houses?
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby novocaine » 23 Sep 2021, 08:11

hay, what we should do right, and this is really important, is ignore the amount of energy required to make our plastic based or glass/mineral based insulation and instead claim we are saving the planet by using as much of this stuff as possible. even better if we make it so you have to change it every 10 years (loft insulation). OK glass fibre is recyclable, just not in the UK.

not mentioning the hundreds of tons of CO2 produced during the process.

shhh, don't tell anyone.

sustainable goals are easy if you put the burden on another country. :D (sorry, that was political)

edit to add, this makes me sound like I'm not interested in reducing energy wastage or co2 etc. which couldn't be further from the truth, it just needs to be done right. heat recovery and pragmatic insulation is viable, just wish it wasn't so damned expensive to implement.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 23 Sep 2021, 08:23

AndyT wrote:Thanks Mike. The gap in my experience is what that "mechanical ventilation with heat recovery" system looks like. If it needs ducts and grilles in every room, leading to a central unit in the loft, is it possible to retrofit into say, millions of small Victorian terraced houses?


That's a fair description of MVHR systems in new build houses, Andy. Retro-fitting, though, can use a somewhat simpler and cruder system, sometimes integrated into a cooker hood, sometimes a unit in the loft at the head of the stairs. Generally it's fairly easy to retro-fit to properly cover the upstairs rooms (the bathroom being the most important), but have a somewhat simpler approach downstairs, treating it as one space rather than trying to cover each room individually.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 23 Sep 2021, 08:25

novocaine wrote:hay, what we should do right, and this is really important, is ignore the amount of energy required to make our plastic based or glass/mineral based insulation and instead claim we are saving the planet by using as much of this stuff as possible........


Yep, that's right. Because the amount of energy used in making the insulation is utterly trivial when compared with the amount of energy they save over their lifetime. There are perfectly good insulators made from recycled paper or from wool, if embodied energy really is your primary concern.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby novocaine » 23 Sep 2021, 08:56

Mike G wrote:
novocaine wrote:hay, what we should do right, and this is really important, is ignore the amount of energy required to make our plastic based or glass/mineral based insulation and instead claim we are saving the planet by using as much of this stuff as possible........


Yep, that's right. Because the amount of energy used in making the insulation is utterly trivial when compared with the amount of energy they save over their lifetime. There are perfectly good insulators made from recycled paper or from wool, if embodied energy really is your primary concern.


payback on energy saved in a typical house from blown fibre insulation is around 5-8 years. worst case is 20GJ of energy input per tonne of insulation (5555kwh). DECC research suggests a saving of 400kwh/y for loft insulation so 13-15 years pay back if you have have a big house. but that's per house so we need to look at how many houses can be insulated per tonne of material (I'm ignoring energy for shipping etc.), so a 10x10m loft requires 189kg of insulation for 270mm, so 5 homes per ton on average, so pay back is 3 years. really simplistic though as it ignores other energy requirements, which could extend that 5 years to more like 8, so it's a close run thing if you replace it when you apparently should and it doesn't sound quite so trivial to me. :)

should you insulate your home, hell yes, should you look at other products beyond the current mainstream, even more yes. :)
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https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/ ... ool_en.pdf

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... art_II.pdf

still stand by my statement though, being energy efficiency shouldn't cost you more then not being.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 23 Sep 2021, 09:06

I'd need a source for the requirement to replace insulation every 10 years, because I have literally never heard anything like that in my life. I can't begin to imagine why that would be the case, other than a great marketing exercise for the suppliers.
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