Month: February 2016


Repairing badly installed EWI Insulation

15 02/16
Repairing badly installed EWI Insulation 2

Repairing badly installed EWI Insulation

Repairing insulation

Back in the sum­mer we got a call from a des­per­ate home­owner in Wim­ble­don who had been taken for a ride by their EWI Installer. The installer in ques­tion had sim­ply given up the install mid-works leav­ing the prop­erty in a ter­ri­ble con­di­tion.

This badly installed exter­nal wall insu­la­tion was even done under the government’s GDHIF scheme – it doesn’t pro­vide home­own­ers with a huge amount of con­fi­dence when works can be car­ried out to this poor stan­dard even under one of their own schemes!

Any­way – we were invited to come and take a look at the prop­erty and quote for the repairing insu­la­tion. It quickly became appar­ent we needed to start again – remov­ing the exist­ing insu­la­tion so we had a blank can­vas to start with. The main rea­son was that the EPS boards had not been cor­rectly attached to the walls. The EPS insu­la­tion boards are nor­mally bed­ded upon adhe­sive (some com­pa­nies use dry sys­tems with no adhe­sive but this is not rec­om­mended) which helps adhere them to the wall. This installer had decided to cut cor­ners and only apply adhe­sive to some of the boards – we were ner­vous that this wouldn’t last – so we made the deci­sion to remove every­thing and start again.

Render-Only compared to EWI

04 02/16
Render and Insulated Render – what you need to know!

Render-Only compared to EWI

Is the ren­der on your home look­ing a lit­tle tired? Well, there has never been a bet­ter time to re-ren­der your home! Tra­di­tion­ally ren­der was a sim­ple sand and cement, which works well how­ever it sim­ply doesn’t last.

The BBA-approved ren­ders we use – known as thin coat ren­ders – are high per­for­mance, multi-coat ren­der sys­tems. The key dif­fer­ence is that they have an addi­tional rein­force­ment layer. This rein­force­ment layer con­sists of a flex­i­ble fibre­glass mesh embed­ded within an adhe­sive. The ben­e­fit of this is that it moves with the build­ing, so the cracks that are com­mon place with the old sand and cement ren­ders don’t form.

The thin coat ren­der, as the name sug­gests, is incred­i­bly thin. A 1mm gran­u­late ren­der should be applied on the wall in a 1mm thick layer – obvi­ously, this is incred­i­bly thin, but again, it gives the ren­der a flex­i­bil­ity allow­ing it to adapt to changes in the build­ing through expan­sion and con­trac­tion (between the dif­fer­ent sea­sons) and also any slightly move­ments.

Don’t be fooled into think­ing that our ren­der sys­tems won’t last, though, because they are flex­i­ble! These sys­tems have been used across Europe in cli­mates far more diverse than we get here and have lasted 30 years or more.

Our most pop­u­lar ren­der is our Sil­i­cone Sil­i­cate sys­tem – this is because it is not only breath­able, but it is also hydropho­bic, mean­ing it repels water so that this sys­tem can be con­sid­ered self-clean­ing. This ren­der is also avail­able in lots of dif­fer­ent gran­u­late sizes to give dif­fer­ent fin­ishes depend­ing on your require­ments – it is avail­able in 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm and 3mm. The Sil­i­cone Sil­i­cate ren­der is also avail­able in almost a lim­it­less num­ber of colours so you can match it to your favourite foot­ball team or what­ever else takes your fancy.

A new layer of ren­der on your home will bring it to life – help­ing pro­tect the under­ly­ing brick­work and make it look as good as new how­ever if you are look­ing for some­thing a lit­tle bit more than just an aes­thetic improve­ment read on!

External Wall Insulation is the future

Ren­ders are all good and well, but it is the EWI  is where the future lies. EWI has all the fea­tures men­tioned above but with the added ben­e­fit of vastly improved ther­mal effi­ciency of your home. It is almost inevitable you will have expe­ri­enced a cold home – an older house per­haps with sin­gle glazed win­dows and old solid bricks. You may also have been inside a new build, with its brand new highly insu­lated cav­ity walls, triple glaz­ing, and lots of loft insu­la­tion.

Well, EWI brings your house right up to mod­ern energy effi­ciency stan­dards. No longer do you need to live in a cold house! The insu­lated ren­der sys­tems can dra­mat­i­cally improve the ther­mal com­fort of the house. 100m of expanded poly­styrene installed under the ren­der can take the u-value of the wall to less than 0.3w/m2k – that is bet­ter than a brand new wall built today. So not only are you improv­ing the look of your house you will also ben­e­fit from mas­sive energy sav­ings.

How big are the energy savings with EWI?

We get asked exactly how big the energy sav­ings will be, and it is dif­fi­cult to put a fig­ure on it, but we do offer a rel­a­tively sim­ple cal­cu­la­tion to help, which is as fol­lows.

Take your energy bill and divide it by 0.7 – this gives you the ele­ment of your bill asso­ci­ated to gas (rather than elec­tric­ity used for light­ing etc.). Take this fig­ure and mul­ti­ply it by 0.8 – this strips out the hot water ele­ment so leaves the heat­ing.

Divide this fig­ure by two, and that should give you an approx­i­mate energy sav­ing from our insu­lated ren­der sys­tems. To work through an exam­ple – let’s say the energy bill is £1350 a year, which is the aver­age energy bill here in the UK.

So the cal­cu­la­tion is as fol­lows.

  • £1350 x 0.7 = £945 (spent on gas – this cal­cu­la­tion strips out elec­tric­ity).
  • £945 x 0.8 = £850 (spent on heat­ing – this cal­cu­la­tion strips out hot water).
  • £850 / 2 = £425 annual sav­ing from installing insu­lated ren­der.

A yearly sav­ing of £425 sim­ply by adding a layer of insu­la­tion under­neath the ren­der – in our opin­ion well worth it!

Why you should get EWI instead of Render-Only

EWI sys­tems are charged at just 5% VAT while ren­der-only sys­tems are charged at 20%. The increased costs asso­ci­ated with insu­lat­ing at the same time as ren­der­ing are not cov­ered entirely by this 15% VAT sav­ing, but as soon as you cou­ple in the energy sav­ings result­ing from the insu­la­tion, the addi­tional cost of the works in many cases will pay back in just two years. From then on, you ben­e­fit every time you turn your heat­ing on as your home won’t lose heat as quickly.

FINDING AN APPROVED OR RECOMMENDED INSTALLER

We have teamed up with EWI Pro to help provide homeowners with an approved and recommended installer network across the UK. EWI Pro are one of the UK’s leading render manufacturers and our experiences with them have always been extremely positive. They have excellent technical support and a vast array of quality products. Their list of approved and recommended installers are specialists, so by choosing one of them to complete your project, you can be assured that the work and the materials installed on your property will be to the highest standard.

If you are looking for an approved or recommended EWI Pro installer, please send an inquiry by filling in your details on the form provided!.







    Unsure of what materials you require?

    Use our EWI solid wall insulation materials calculator to calculate exactly what materials you will need for a particular job.

    EWI Pro Training Academy

    We are delighted to announce we have partnered with the EWI Pro Training Academy in Aylesbury to bring you a series of professional installer training courses.

    We have 6 unique courses to choose from, each targeting a different area of the External Wall Insulation installation process.The training courses are completed over the course of a half-day or full day, and installers will receive an EWI Pro certificate upon completion.

    Why this programme?

    The EWI Pro Training courses are designed with an all-round approach to learning. You will be given the chance to learn about installing EWI systems through a mixture of classroom and practical, hands-on training.

    This programme also allows you to learn from experienced EWI professionals with years of industry experience. This way, you will leave the course equipped with the most relevant skills.






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