Did you know that there are different ways to insulate the exterior walls of your home? The first step is to see how the building was built: Are the walls made with cavity blocks, or is there two walls built side by side with a cavity between them. The latter is referred to as cavity wall.
Cavity Block Structure
If your home has cavity block structure then there are two main options for insulating your walls.
The first is Internal Warmboard Insulation. Certified Tradesmen fix an insulating board to the inside of the external walls of the building. An example of this would be a house built in the 50’s, with no external wall insulation. To meet current ‘Part L’ Building Regulations, you would need to add 92.5mm of Internal Wall Insulation. If there was 50mm of insulation already on the wall, you would only need to add 42.5mm top-up.
By choosing contractors registered with SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland), home owners can avail of the Better Energy Home Scheme, which provides substantial grants towards the cost of works. One major advantage of warm board insulation is that you are no longer heating the walls of the property. There are various types of internal warmboard, such as Kingspan Kooltherm and EasyBoard.
The second method of insulating Cavity Block Structures is External Wall Insulation, also known as an External Wrap. In this case, the contractor fixes dense insulation panels to the exterior of a building using a bonding agent and mechanical fixings. On top of this there is a reinforcing mortar layer with glass fibre mesh and a primer layer and a decorative render finish that is available in many different colors.
Cavity Wall Structure
If a building’s walls are constructed using an outer leaf solid block, a cavity (normally 100mm) and an inner leaf solid block, then it is known as a Cavity Wall Structure. There is an additional retrofit insulation method in this case known as Cavity Wall Pumped Insulation. A series of small holes are drilled in the structure and a bonded bead is pumped into the wall. The advantages of this method is that there is minimal disruption to the interior/exterior of the building.