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We have a 1920s cottage with walls that are about 2ft thick, primarily made up of flint then rendered. I would like to improve the insulation and was thinking of external insulation and cladding on our gable end wall. It's a very exposed part of the house and always feels the coldest.
Has anyone else fitted external insulation? Was it worth it?
Unsure on the plastic cladding or timber.
Any thoughts on this?
I'm in a similar position (1960s timber framed house with brick skin, no insulation. I'd like to clad in timber but that adds to the cost as you need a frame to support the cladding. Standard way is to render over the insulation, so if the house is already rendered I'd stick with that.
I'm looking at about £20k for a large 4 bedroom detached house. When I win the lottery...
You're unlikely to see the return on investment if lowering your heating bill is the goal.
There are a lot of technical details to get right and a lot of the contractor's who claim to specialise in external wall insulation are cowboys. If you get it wrong, it can cause no end of problems with damp and cold bridging which will only make the comfort inside the house worse and might cause long term damage to the walls themself.
That being said if you plan to stay in the property for another few decades it might be worth it at the rate energy prices are rising. It's a bit like solar panels, takes decades to make back the initial outlay in savings.
I did a 2 day course with Cawd (the Welsh governments historic property service) called Level 3 Award in Energy Efficiency for Older and Traditional Buildings – 2 day Retrofit course. My takeaway was that it has to be done right, and to do it right is expensive and needs to be done properly.
Thanks guys. That is interesting to know airvent. The gable end already suffers from a bit of damp etc due to the exposed nature and orientation. It gets the worst weather, so I'd hate to make it even worse in terms of cold and damp.
I do not think we will be moving for a number of years, so in the long run it'd be worth it. Fitted solar panels last year, which has already had a huge impact on our oil bills.
Since it's been rendered already
- presumably for a good period of time-
I suspect any problems that might have arisen with interstitial condensation and resulting damp would have already shown themselves by now - sounds like they have.
It could well be cold in the gable rooms through the combination of pre-existing interstitial condensation being exacerbated by windchill.
Of course it needs to be done right, but I don't think the risk in your case will be quite as bad as air vent thinks. The wall is already pretty much non-breathable. Slapping insulation and cladding on top is unlikely to worsen it.
That said I'm with him on the cost-benefit. Insulating only an exposed wall is unlikely to give you any kind of decent payback, although if you're struggling to heat the gable end rooms it will probably increase their habitability. Sheltering it with the wood cladding just to keep the wind and water off the main structure might be the best way to go. A dry wall is a warm wall. Personally, if I went the cladding route I'd have the render buzzed off first so the wall breathes correctly. You'll probably find your pre-exisitng damp starts to disappear after that.
Can't comment on the cost benefits but walk past a few houses which have had external insulation with a fake brick facade - looks very nice.
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/7486/16190586106_9fe02c0704.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/7486/16190586106_9fe02c0704.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/qEGZbj ]External Insulation[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/5470/17676765655_36bf85caa8.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/5470/17676765655_36bf85caa8.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/sW33zD ]Brick and Render External Insulation[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/5448/17490453049_f16b43e4a2.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/5448/17490453049_f16b43e4a2.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/sDz9kk ]Brick and Render External Insulation[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
7 years later they still look really tidy.
Lived in a solid brick farmhouse in Gwynedd, rendered walls. Cold, damp (mushrooms on the skirtings!), impossible to get warm. The walls were soaking as the render trapped moisture that had got in from cracks, faulty chimney flashing etc.
Render removed, 50mm polystyrene insulation fitted outside with a small airgap to the brick, then a light skim render. Total transformation - we could get the house warm for the first time ever! We also fitted some insulated plasterboard inside after the walls had dried out, a small woodburner was enough to heat the place.
(The airgap between the insulation and the wall is important, to allow the wall to breathe).
In a totally not useful post, am I the only one marginally peeved that the fake brick façade always looks like stretcher bond, when the original, because it was solid wall, would have been a Flemish bond or something similar...
In a totally not useful post, am I the only one marginally peeved that the fake brick façade always looks like stretcher bond, when the original, because it was solid wall, would have been a Flemish bond or something similar…
The bond exactly matches the neighbour (more by accident I suspect).
That's a 1930's semi not a solid wall Victorian which would be Flemish etc.