Why Install External Solid Wall Insulation?

Why Install External Wall Insulation?

Exter­nal solid wall insu­la­tion is fast becom­ing the most pop­u­lar prop­erty home improve­ment here in the UK. There are many rea­sons for this, which we will dis­cuss below.

Before we start though – just a brief reminder on what exactly external solid wall insulation is!

If you have a prop­erty built prior to 1930, the chances are that it will be com­prised of solid wall con­struc­tion. Put sim­ply, this means there is no cav­ity; the two skins of brick that make up the wall are built along­side one another. You can recog­nise a solid wall by the pres­ence of short half bricks in the wall itself (if you look from the out­side) – this is where brick has been laid at 90 degrees to the wall, tying the two skins of brick together.

Unfortunately, this makes this type of wall more difficult to insulate – but certainly not impossible!

Instead of inject­ing the cav­ity (which you would do for newer cav­ity walls), insu­la­tion board is added to either the out­side or the inside of the prop­erty. In a way, this is good because you are not lim­ited by the size of cav­ity on how much insu­la­tion you can add to the wall, but it does have other impli­ca­tions like chang­ing the appear­ance of the out­side of the prop­erty (since the exter­nal wall insu­la­tion nor­mally gets ren­dered) or mak­ing rooms smaller if you attach the insu­la­tion on the inside of the prop­erty.

So why then would you look to insu­late your home with solid wall insu­la­tion?

Heating

The main rea­son for insu­lat­ing your home with solid wall insu­la­tion is to min­imise heat loss, thereby reduc­ing your heat­ing bill.

An easy way to com­pare a property’s heat loss per­for­mance is to look at the u-value, which gives a mea­sure of the ther­mal con­duc­tiv­ity / heat loss through a mate­r­ial. With­out insu­la­tion, solid wall prop­er­ties have a U-Value of around 2.1, com­pared with around 0.27 of an insu­lated one – this is a huge improve­ment. Now for those of you who don’t speak in U-val­ues, lets con­sider the finan­cial sav­ings.

An insu­lated prop­erty may save you around £150 per length of heat loss wall per year since the heat­ing can be on less to warm the house. There­fore, if you live in a mid ter­race house, you may save £300 per year after the instal­la­tion of exter­nal solid wall insu­la­tion. End ter­race house, £450 and a fully detached prop­erty may save as much as £600 if solid wall insu­la­tion is installed.

 External Wall Insulation and the Environment

By min­imis­ing the use of your gas boiler, by hav­ing insu­lated the walls, you pro­duce fewer car­bon emis­sions as a result. Burn­ing fos­sil fuels, includ­ing mains gas, is one of the major fac­tors dri­ving global warm­ing. So by installing solid wall insu­la­tion, you are doing your bit for the envi­ron­ment too!

Aesthetics 

As many solid brick houses were con­structed over 100 years ago, they have had time to vis­i­bly crum­ble and begin to look old and dejected. How­ever, exter­nal wall insu­la­tion pro­vides a bril­liantly ren­dered fin­ish, avail­able in many colours, which can really reju­ve­nate the prop­erty.

By ren­der­ing a prop­erty, you are pro­tect­ing what is under­neath from the ele­ments thereby reduc­ing the need for up-keep over the com­ing years. In addi­tion, if you have a prop­erty that has pre­vi­ously been ren­dered or peb­ble-dashed, then giv­ing it a new coat can really improve the look of it!

Soundproofing

Along with its fan­tas­tic ther­mal insu­lat­ing qual­i­ties, exter­nal solid wall insu­la­tion can also improve acoustic insu­la­tion qual­i­ties of the prop­erty. There­fore if you live on a busy road or on a flight path, then exter­nal solid wall insu­la­tion can help keep those loud noises out help­ing ensure you have a rest­ful night.

Structure

Old prop­er­ties built with solid brick can often crum­ble and lose some of their strength over time. Installing exter­nal solid wall insu­la­tion not only gives the walls a bit of struc­tural strength but also pro­vides a bar­rier to the ele­ments that may be dam­ag­ing the brickwork under­neath.

So there you have it, a brief overview of the main ben­e­fits of exter­nal solid wall insu­la­tion.