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Insulation

Because around half of heat loss in a typical home is through the walls and loft, it's worth checking whether yours are insulated. Adopting the following measures can significantly reduce your energy bills, whilst also reducing your carbon dioxide emissions.

Cavity wall insulation

Around a third of all the heat lost in an un-insulated home is lost through the walls. Cavity wall insulation is a fantastic way to significantly reduce the amount of energy you need to heat your home.

Cavity wall insulation is a fantastic way to significantly reduce the amount of energy you need to heat your home. The average house could reduce heating costs by 15%. In fact, between 2002 and 2005 around 800,000 households installed cavity wall insulation. It is estimated that this will have saved nearly 400,000 tonnes of CO2, enough to fill the new Wembley Stadium 47 times.

Solid wall insulation

If you have solid walls you can either insulate them with external or internal insulation, saving you around £300 a year on your energy bills.

Solid walls lose even more heat than cavity walls; the only way to reduce this heat loss is to insulate them on the inside or the outside.

This will help create a more even temperature in your home, help prevent condensation on the walls and ceilings and can also reduce the amount of heat building up inside your home during summer hot spells. It's not cheap, but you will soon see the benefits to your heating bill and it's another way of playing your part in reducing CO2 emissions. There are two types of solid wall insulation: external and internal.

How external wall insulation works

This involves adding a decorative weather-proof insulating treatment to the outside of your wall. The thickness of the insulation needs to be between 50 and 100mm and is usually installed where there are severe heating problems or the exterior of the building requires some form of other repair work providing the opportunity of adding insulation.

External wall insulation is more expensive than cavity wall insulation but it could save you around £300 a year on your energy bills and it could pay for itself in around six years.

A three bedroom semi-detached house could save nearly 2.5 tonnes of CO2 a year.

Internal wall insulation

Solid walls can also be insulated by applying internal wall insulation. Types include ready made insulation/plaster board laminates or wooden battens in-filled with insulation or flexible linings.
How internal wall insulation works

Insulation/plaster board laminates usually consist of plasterboard backed with insulating material typically to a total thickness of up to 90mm. The construction of the laminates reduces the amount of heat which would otherwise pass through into the wall and outside.

Floor insulation

Gaps and draughts around skirting boards and floors are simple to fix yourself with a tube of sealant bought from most DIY stores. You could save around £40 a year by insulating your floors.

If you've ever stepped from your bed in the morning still half asleep only to leap back in again as soon as your warm pinkies touch the icy cold floor you'll know how a draughty home feels. Gaps and draughts around skirting boards and floors are simple to fix yourself with a tube of sealant bought from most DIY stores.

How floor insulation works

Timber floors can be insulated by lifting the floorboards and laying mineral wool insulation supported by netting between the joists.

You can also use a regular tube sealant, such as silicon to fill gaps between floorboards and skirting boards to stop draughts. A note of warning, however - don't block under-floor airbricks in your outside walls. Floorboards will rot without adequate ventilation.

Loft Insulation

Insulating your loft could save you around £110 per year on your energy bills. If everyone in the UK topped up their loft insulation to 270mm, £380m would be saved each year!

Without loft insulation you could be losing as much as 15% of your heating costs through your roof. Insulating your loft is a simple and effective way to reduce your heating bills.

It acts as a blanket, trapping heat rising from the house below. We could also lag your pipes at the same time for optimum efficiency.