Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

10 degrees C!? I hope there aren’t any old, young or vulnerable people in your house.

Just turned ours down to 18 from 18.5. HP seems to be coping fine though which is good to know.

up to 10C now ...toasty

just me ( old AND vulnerable ! ) with a fleece and a down body warmer. save the planet and all that

Jam wouldn’t stand for 10c

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Heating has been off for a while as solar gain through low-E glass means it’s a bit warm now with 22.9° of free heat.
More impressed with the slow heat loss overnight when it’s sub zero outside with a solid wall and a huge 5m single glazed window that’s been insulated/secondary glazed.

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I’m interested in both the recent convos:

1) house is 4° and loses heat like a sieve
2) putting insulation into the cavities

What rough costs have people had for cavity wall insulation - obviously will differ by house size but eg guesstimates for a 3 bed semi, or rough prices per m2?

I am in the process of plugging other leaks and changing the windows

Have you got any loft insulation at all?

I've no complaints about the overall temperature here, but the distribution is all wrong. Sun does a great job of heating exactly where I don't need it during the day (living room is currently 3.5C higher than the thermostat is set to), but all the warm air is just stuck up there. Unfortunately most of the heat produced by the CH will eventually end up in the same place.

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Yes but ancient and a bit patchy ~80-90% coverage I think. Is that likely to be the best first step?

Absolutely. The easiest and cheapest change you can make.

If the insulation is older than 2000, you probably don't even have 100mm.

Has anyone done research as to who is cost effective and good (outside London, south/south west)? I’m starting to but if someone else already has that would be awesome

Gillies who you using for EWI im looking for a quote. and if any one has usd a trusted contractor any suggestion's would be good. ta

i'm in glasgow so maybe not much use?

I've gotten a good response from warmhouse ltd but this website should be useful -
https://www.theiaa.co.uk/installer-list/

Ah ok cool il have a look ta mate

Definitely start with the loft, get some loft legs and raise the floor level if needed.

On the topic of EWI, speaking with a company just now who don't/won't use a roofer when installing. So instead of extending rafters and fitting sarking, they want to just use verge trim. I don't know enough to say, but is there any reason why verge trim is a bad option?

On the topic of loft insulation. My loft has some existing insulation but it's old and pretty thin. Is it a case of just chopping some new insulation to size and chucking it on top of what's already up there between the beams?

We removed the old thin stuff but if you've got the space I imagine you could keep it. We did a layer between the joists then a layer perpendicular across the tops of them, hence needing to raise the floor level. Important to look at any wires up there and keep them on top of the insulation if you can and if you put a floor over it keep a bit of an air gap

@gillies I can't really comment on it other than the visual aspect. A few houses in my village have EWI and the verge trim looks really weird. Its below the roof line and pokes out like a little ledge. It looks to be plastic and hasn't aged that well with leaves/moss seeming to find it a nice place to hang out.

This may be largely to installation than anything else though!

I'm keeping the existing installation that doesn't looks too bad and building up 300mm on top of that. My place has metal conduit for all the wiring in the loft so I sort of have to go on top with the perpendicular layer, but hopefully it will be fine. #prayforandos

I don't even mind the visual point so much as it's to the rear of my place which is terraced. I'm just concerned about longevity/water ingress.

I notice that PAS2035 (which is the latest/greatest standard) doesn't allow verge trim either.

Reminds me of our old house when we were kids. Used to love the ice patterns

All good info, thanks!

A fan set in the living room floor subtly pushing the warm downstairs? Or some kind of diy heat exchanger with a an array of copper pipes in the living room ceiling bringing heat down to downstairs. Might look cool in a Heath Robinson kind of way.

Eesh :(

That's not good for you or your house. The general consensus is you shouldn't let your house drop below 15 to prevent mould. I don't think this is practical for a lot of people (we've currently got rooms that can get down to 9 without the heating on and it doesn't seem to cause problems) but I would be a bit worried about what 4 could be doing to the fabric of the building, the health of its elderly vulnerable occupant aside ;)

solar gain through low-E glass

Ooh I didn't know you'd got that. Am I right in thinking that your solar gain is reduced in the first place by the low-E glass? I.e. it works both ways right?

I'm interested in it anyway for the usual reasons, but the front of our house faces west and the sun is crazy in summer. It heats up our first floor front room something crazy then this heat rises into our loft bedroom, so I was thinking that low-E glass might help reduce that a bit (as part of a bigger package of stuff).