Insulating your Home

There's lots of talk of how to reduce energy costs and becoming more green by insulating your home.
Three years ago I bought a very old house with minimal insulation, and since then I have been gradually improving its green-ness....but hasn't been without its challenges......amongst which were:

• How to insulate single-brick width walls in the add-on laundry and office
• How to insulate the ceiling of the same area without ripping out the roof
• How to insulate a loft room with no space in it's ceiling
• Heat loss behind false interior walls

Although most of the information is about insulating the roof space, what many people don't fully appreciate is that at least half of the wasted energy can be through the exterior walls. This is why a detached house is much more expensive to heat than a terraced or apartment. Solid brick and stone walls also lose heat more than cavity walls.

We have an addition to the house which was probably built mid last century, when nobody really knew or cared about heat loss. It's only single story, with a corrugated concrete/asbestos roof which is still in good condition, so I didn't want to touch it. The walls are a mix of single brick skin and some motley weatherboard, with virtually no insulating properties, and it looked a bit of an eyesore outside.

The solution to the walls, which I tackled first as it was a summer job, was to clad the outside in weatherboard (shiplap) with insulation between it and the existing wall behind. I had several options, ranging from inexpensive insulating wool, to the more expensive multi-layer sheets. You get what you pay for, and the more expensive multi-layer sheets I bought have the same insulating properties as a 200mm thickness of wool, but are only about 30mm thick. So rather than increase the wall thickness too much I opted for the sheet material.

Cladding the outside with shiplap was relatively easy....just a bit time consuming. It was a matter of securing vertical wooden battens to the existing wall, taking the opportunity to make sure all were vertical, and then nailling on the shiplap with the insulation sheet underneath. I used treated battens and shiplap, and stainless steel nails, as I wanted it to be low naintenance. It's also important to reduce any air circulation between the insulation and wall and cladding, so I installed a strip of wool insulation to plug the gaps top and bottom.....just enough to still allow some ventilation to avoid any moisture buildup.

The ceiling was even easier, as I installed foam backed plasterboard, with 100mm of insulating foam, secured with 170mm screws through the existing ceiling to the beams above. 

The shiplap and insulation products were bought from Champion Timber as they deliver free of charge.

More to come...........