I hope you're all having a great Wednesday - it's usually a boring day for me because there is no Eastenders on a Wednesday haha - but I'm now filling that empty space with plenty of Steeeeeem and it feels good!!
I moved into my new home in October 2017 and the first thing I noticed is how cold it is all the time. It's not a great big mansion or an old creeky Victorian property - it's a 1930s 2-Bed End of Terrace property and I spent a year renovating it from top to bottom. There is absolutely no draughts from the windows and doors but it's still strikingly cold in the evenings.
I've got a pretty decent boiler system, it's a new Worcester 32CDi Greenstar and all new plastic "Flexipipe" plumbing so I won't ever have issues with limescale build up in the pipes.
We've recently had one of the coldest winters here in London, UK and throughout most of Winter I've had to keep my heating on all day and night because if I turn it off, the house would lose heat through the walls so fast that within an hour you'd need your scarf and jacket!
So Why Is It So Cold?
Well it wasn't clear at the time of purchase as the property came with limited information because it was a repossession home that I purchased - but when we started knocking walls down to renovate the property, we soon realised that it was a "clay-brick" built home. I've not heard of it before but apparently, councils around London used clay-bricks in some of their budget builds.Well these clay bricks are ridiculously fragile and the pointing of cement between the bricks was done very badly - if you chip away the plaster back to bare brick and place your hand close to it, you could feel the air coming through the gaps!!
So You Had The Property Insulated?
The surveyor report confirmed it - we had rapid heat loss through our walls and an empty 70mm cavity which needed filling. We discussed costs and one of the questions I asked was how effective will the insulation be - because my last quarterely bill in December 2017 was horrendous at £295.00 !!!!
The surveyor explained that we should notice an improvement within a few days and the insulation would pay itself off usually in 15-24 months.
So I decided to go ahead and give it a try - I was able to get a booking for the second week of January and it was finalised, they were coming to insulate my cavity walls!
The engineer drove down from Leicester early morning to be with me at 9am on the dot and on his own, he spent the best part of a day pumping the cavity walls around my house with a liquid-foam insulation that expands and seals the cavity in my external walls.
The Results?
Since having the walls insulated I now have the heating off all throughout the day and we've got it on timer to come on between 6pm-10pm in the evenings and them from 6.30am-9am in the mornings :)Even then I have to manually switch it off sometimes because it gets too hot haha!
I can honestly say the cavity wall insulation has made a major difference. Where before the insulation, we had total heat loss within the hour - now we can have the heating off for hours and our home retains most of the heat.
I should mention that during the renovation of the property I did install thermal boards and replaced the loft insulation as well
If your property has cavity walls and you've not yet had it insulated, I can definitely recommend it - it makes a world of difference and although I'm yet to see what my energy bill will be for this month, I know I've only been using half the energy I have been over the last few months and so I'm pretty confident it will pay for itself by the end of 2018.