house insulation

vietnam5

any ideas how to insulate a 3 bed semi timber frame house approx 10 years old.Need to get a ber cert but dont have thousands to spend.Help

Buford T Justice

Would suggest getting a BER First, they will tell you what you need to do.

mrgaa1

The BER will not show whats in the walls of the house unless you open the wall up.
I suppose the question has to be asked why do you need to insulate your timber frame home - it should already be warm?

What you need to consider is the envelope of the building - the external walls and the ceiling below the attic.
Check all external doors are draught proof and that the windows are not leaking air via the small air ducts at the top.
In the attice ensure you have 300mm minimum of insulation. 150mm between the rafters and then lay another lay of 150mm across the rafters. Yes it will make it hard to walk on afterwards but you can put boards down to ease walking.
For the external walls this is the issue. There are a few ways to do this but neither light on the pocket.
Firstly you can remove all the plasterboard on your external walls and replace with insulated plasterboard. This however leads to major re-decoration.
Secondly you could add external insulation and use a system such as dryvit to cover the outside. You will have to maintain air passages to the house as timber frame relies on the wall vents that you should see on your external walls - one row low down, one row higher up.
Thirdly - your walls inside may be drylined as opposed to being skimmed. You could do this but again re-decoration.
You can't put beadings into the cavity wall (as far as I know) as this will stop the timber from breathing.
You may well have vents in your bathroom and toilets for air extraction. You could look at installing a MHVR which would mean that vents are sealed better and air is exchanged throughout the house as opposed to allowing cold incoming air into your house.

Personally, if it was me I'd look to re-plasterboard the internal part of the house ensuring that the correct insulation is in the walls. It won't be cheap unfortunately.

Buford T Justice

mrgaa1 wrote: »

The BER will not show whats in the walls of the house unless you open the wall up.
I suppose the question has to be asked why do you need to insulate your timber frame home - it should already be warm?

What you need to consider is the envelope of the building - the external walls and the ceiling below the attic.
Check all external doors are draught proof and that the windows are not leaking air via the small air ducts at the top.
In the attice ensure you have 300mm minimum of insulation. 150mm between the rafters and then lay another lay of 150mm across the rafters. Yes it will make it hard to walk on afterwards but you can put boards down to ease walking.
For the external walls this is the issue. There are a few ways to do this but neither light on the pocket.
Firstly you can remove all the plasterboard on your external walls and replace with insulated plasterboard. This however leads to major re-decoration.
Secondly you could add external insulation and use a system such as dryvit to cover the outside. You will have to maintain air passages to the house as timber frame relies on the wall vents that you should see on your external walls - one row low down, one row higher up.
Thirdly - your walls inside may be drylined as opposed to being skimmed. You could do this but again re-decoration.
You can't put beadings into the cavity wall (as far as I know) as this will stop the timber from breathing.
You may well have vents in your bathroom and toilets for air extraction. You could look at installing a MHVR which would mean that vents are sealed better and air is exchanged throughout the house as opposed to allowing cold incoming air into your house.

Personally, if it was me I'd look to re-plasterboard the internal part of the house ensuring that the correct insulation is in the walls. It won't be cheap unfortunately.

What does MHVR stand for?

I wouldn't put boards down on top of the insulation. If you compress insulation it will reduce its performance. Get some insulated loft floorboards instead in my opinion.

paddy147

Fingers McGee wrote: »

What does MHVR stand for?

I wouldn't put boards down on top of the insulation. If you compress insulation it will reduce its performance. Get some insulated loft floorboards instead in my opinion.

+1 for the insulated loft boards.

they are brilliant.:)