Cavity Wall Insulation

Immediate permission given by the letting agents/landlord, so I got straight on to British Gas who have booked an appointment for a survey to get it installed - in March of next year! Apparently, they are really busy.

 

The chap on the phone said to ring back next week in case they had any cancellations, but even if they don't, I am not overly bothered to be honest - its not anything like as cold as our last house was, I am simply looking to make sure that it is the best it can be to keep the bills as low as possible.

Thanks Jenny

We're hoping to live here for some years to come, so its in our interests to look after tha place. Besides, I am a great believer that if someone is good enough to let you rent/borrow/use their property then you should look after it as you would if it were your own, and return it to them in as good or better condition than you got it in.

 

I might see if I can find another company to do it in the meantime, and then just cancel with them.

Can you recommend anyone?

EDIT - I see Tesco are offering it too; I might give them a ring tomorrow and see if they can do it a bit quicker.

 

You won't regret having cavity wall insulation done FC, we noticed an immediate effect when ours was done years ago. Our house went from being rather cold most of the time to nice and snug plus our heating bills went down significantly. As I said it was a good few years ago, before full grants were available, it cost us about £200 but I reckon we recouped that in the first year.

Also no need to worry about damp bridging the cavity, the modern materials that are blown in (Rockwool) won't cause any problems. In the bad old days (1970s), when cavity wall insulation was first tried, several companies used nasty chemicals (expanding foams for example) that were responsible for damp and even worse problems. These are no longer used but people still have bad memories of house outer walls being taken down to remove the offending nasties.

 

Just as a note, we've all paid for the insulation ten times over as there is a government premium on all energy bills [it is listed on your bill] for the Green policy.
I paid £99 for the cavity walls to be done when upgrading the house and the guy who inspected the house to see if it was suitable grinned when I said it was cheap and pointed out that I'd already paid for it, and still would be, on my gas and electricity bills

 

It's over 35 years since we had insulation done. In those days they recommended 2" of insulation in the loft . Then they changed it to 4" and I got the extra 2" free but had to put it down myself. I remember having to cover up very well and wearing a face mask. We were also instructed not to run it completely to the edge of the eaves in order to allow heat to escape in very hot weather! There was a noticeable difference in our heating bills that winter.

Some years later I put down flooring in the loft but the 4" was lower than the rafters so there was no problem. I don't think I shall bother with more insulation and I reckon that in a few years they'll start to recommend that you fill the whole loft with insulation .

One thing I did do in recent years was to drill holes in the flooring above where I had just installed ceiling lights below. This may have been an unnecessary precaution but I don't know!

I had cavity insulation put in 35 years ago, a year or two after the loft insulation, and that made a fantastic difference not only to the heating bills but to our comfort. Prior to that we used to get downdrafts on the walls which made it colder around the outside of the rooms. We also used to get mould forming in the upper corners of the rooms. All this went away when we had the cavity insulation done. We were able to use all of the room in comfort. That was the pumped foam insulation and we have never had a problem with it.