A Guide to Insulation

Insulating your home is a fundamental step towards creating a comfortable and eco-friendly lifestyle. Reducing energy bills is a very appealing step to minimising your carbon emissions, a proper insulated home offers a multitude of benefits. In this post, we'll explore the importance of home insulation and provide practical tips for maximising its effectiveness.

Understanding the Benefits

By creating a thermal barrier between the interior and exterior of your home, insulation helps regulate indoor temperatures, ensuring year-round comfort for you and your family warm in winter and cool in summer. Additionally, insulation plays a crucial role in reducing energy consumption by keeping the heat in, resulting in lower energy bills and therefore a smaller carbon footprint.

Choosing the Right Insulation

When it comes to selecting insulation for your home, understanding the age and type of your property is crucial to choosing suitable type and insulation materials. It's essential to ensure that any insulation materials or systems used do not hinder the building's ability to manage moisture. Vapour-open and hygroscopic materials like timber fibre insulation, lime-based insulating plasters, and renders are often preferred for retrofitting older properties with solid walls, as they allow moisture vapour to pass through and can absorb and release moisture as needed.

For cavity wall construction, options include filling the cavity or applying internal or external insulation, such as wood fibre boards. Common insulation types include foam-based boards, wood fibre, and sheep's wool, each offering unique advantages in terms of cost, effectiveness, and environmental impact.

Properties constructed using materials like brick, stone, clay, and lime are typically moisture-balanced, meaning they have high vapour permeability and can absorb and release moisture as needed. Consulting with a professional insulation contractor can help determine the most suitable insulation type and R-value for your specific requirements and ensure that your home remains thermally efficient while managing moisture effectively.

Key Areas for Insulation

To maximise the efficiency of your home insulation, it's crucial to identify and prioritise key areas for insulation. These may include:

Roof: Insulating your attic space is one of the most effective ways to reduce heat loss and typically, it’s the first place we recommend to add insulation in a retrofit. Adding a thick layer of insulation at ceiling level including any areas of sloped ceiling helps prevent warm air from escaping through the roof during winter and keeps hot air out during summer.

Walls: Insulating exterior walls helps maintain consistent indoor temperatures and reduces energy consumption for heating and cooling. Depending on the construction of your home, insulation can be installed either inside the walls (internal insulation) or outside (external insulation).

Floors: Insulating ground floors whether they are suspended or solid is an important step to getting continuity of your insulation, insulating on top of existing floors with even a small amount of insulation will make a difference. Consider also insulating above unheated spaces such as basements, or garages to help prevent heat loss and cold drafts.

Windows and Doors: We recommend always specifying the best thermally performing windows you can afford. While windows and doors themselves are not typically insulated, adding weatherstripping and caulking around them helps minimise air leakage and improve insulation performance.

Installation and Maintenance

While some homeowners may choose to install insulation themselves, typically for loft insulation. Hiring a professional ensures proper installation and optimal performance particularly for external or internal insulation additions. Make sure that any insulation that you put in your home is compatible with it. For example a solid walled home is vapour open and therefore this should be maintained by specifying vapour open insulation products. Additionally, regular maintenance and inspection of insulation are essential to identify any issues such as gaps, settling, or damage and address them promptly to maintain efficiency and effectiveness.

Investing in home insulation is a wise decision that pays off in terms of comfort, energy savings, and sustainability. By understanding the benefits of insulation, choosing the right type and installation method, and prioritising key areas for insulation, you can create a more comfortable, efficient, and eco-friendly home for years to come.