Simple ways to improve efficiency of 1990s house

Simple ways to improve efficiency of 1990s house

You could reduce the BPM from about 140 to around 110

Or for any real benefit would I need to properly raise the floor to allow for uncompressed insulation?
The garage itself has no heating other than the fact the boiler is in there, has two leaky up and over doors and a bare concrete floor, should the first port of call be improving its insulation rather than insulating the house from it??

Might be easier to insulate the ceiling of the garage rather than lift the floor above

🤣

Edit: that was in response to your first post, not suggesting you were being less than helpful!

You could reduce the BPM from about 140 to around 110

Close the Internet for today, you win.

Depends what you plan to do with the garage. If the boiler is in there you'll be losing some heat. I'd be tempted to insulate the whole garage and make it a useful space. Workshop, bike cave, gym, etc.

Decent curtains (and closing them) are an easy win.

The house was built for/by the previous owners in 1996 and had a SAP rating (precursor to EPC?) of 100 at the time so has a fair few positive features (triple glazing throughout, insulated cavity walls, whole home ventilation with heat recovery, wet UFH on ground floor…)

The question is how *well* these were built and installed. The SAP I think was 'as designed' not 'as built'. IANABEE.

Garage - fling insulated plasterboard or insulation at the ceiling and walls between it and the house. Fit insulated garage doors.

Top up any easily accessible insulation areas.

Be fussy about any drafts and leaks.

Depends what you plan to do with the garage

Not much leeway there - thats pretty much always 130bpm

Sounds like the integral garage is worth looking at (and based on how cold the floor feels in the room above, I’d hope for a significant improvement by doing so!)

In terms of use, it’s for bike storage/fettling as well as general storage (unlikely ever to have cars in there!) but not as a gym as there’s a separate detached garage for that (likely to be the subject of a future thread…)

It’s constructed of block walls (supposedly an insulated cavity behind) concrete floor and plastered ceiling.

For the walls, it should be straightforward to attach insulated plasterboard. Is this likely to be cheaper/better than battens, traditional insulation and normal plasterboard?

For the ceiling I suppose I’d attach the boards using wall plugs in the existing plaster (very much a DIY novice so forgive the basic question! Maybe I’d need to drill a hole and figure out the plaster thickness/what’s behind before I chose the fixings??).

For the floor, would cheap foam tiles (e.g. https://www.costco.co.uk/Tyres-Automotive/Garage/Garage-Flooring/Best-Step-Microban-Interlocking-Comfort-Flooring-61-x-61-x-12-cm-8-Pack/p/290124)
Offer anything other than a nicer surface underfoot?

For the doors, would putting up something like this be worth doing? https://www.toolstation.com/thermawrap-self-adhesive-garage-door-insulation/p31452

Thanks all

If you are going to add insulation to the loft (which is the first thing you should do) you def want to add decent thickness of lagging to all exposed pipework in the loft to prevent pipes freezing. If you have a water tank don't insulate between ceiling & underneath it but around it instead.

I think that silver bubble wrap tends to get sold as ‘insulation’ without any meaningful information about its thermal properties (or claims that aren't credible for the application. Why are we endevouring to put 300mm of insulation in our lofts if 6mm of shiny bubble wrap would do 🙂

i think there’s more value in insulating between the garage and the house - particularly that ceiling. Doing the door could end up being a lot of effort for minimal benefit

I'm I the only one here thinking he is being advised to chill a bit and get the heart rate down and I'm in the building trade and had to look it up

Lagging and cheap insulation where possible.
If you have the garage space, you could put in a stud wall/internally insulate.

As you've asked about energy efficiency, rather than just heating, make sure all of your bulbs/lighting are LED.
Seek to upgrade appliances to be more energy efficient over time.

For the ceiling I suppose I’d attach the boards using wall plugs in the existing plaster (very much a DIY novice so

You'd need to locate the joists above, plugs into plaster won't do it.

Find out what is between the floorboards and the ceiling, there may well be a significant void you can access from below by pulling down the existing garage ceiling. That can be filled with insulation and then normal or insulated plasterboard refixed to the exposed joists. Turn off the power before investigating, there is likely to be wires and pipes running through the void...

This is probably a dumb question but.... how do you get insulation to stay in place above you, in the ceiling, before replacing plasterboards?

(also, top marks to maccruiskeen for the house/garage/BPM quips 👍)

I was talking to a colleague about how to do this and he ended up suspending wire/string between the joists and laying the insulation over the string, then attaching the plasterboard.

Seemed ingenious to me.

As had already been inferred, the chance of a 90’s house being built to meet its designed standard of 100 in SAP is almost zero. 90’s houses often suffer from thermal bypass with wind blowing round the insulation leaving you living in a plasterboard tent. If you want to know how it is performing and find issues get a door blower test and thermal imaging survey done. Garage is outside of the thermal envelope, Makes little sense to increase its insulation but insulate between house and garage. I would put money on the door from the garage to the house leaking energy like a sieve.

Remove any grime from door and window seals. That could be worth a few more BPM? 🤣

Careful now, we don’t want him ending up in a trance.