Loft insulation - how much did it reduce your heating bills?

[Kent]

We're is the weakest point? If you do super insulation but leave the front door open is the extreme example of this
Fibreglass is nowhere near as good as warm boarding the roof with tri- iso and cellular foil backed foam
Heat rises but I don't know how bad your floor is

 

[MCKDAVID]

if you look on the CIBSE website, (Chartered Institure of Building Service Engineers) there's a lot of good data there, you'll find some good yardsticks of comparisons, based on goverment & CIBSE research. I think that's about as precise as you'll get without the "variations" clouding the issue.

By variations, I mean that any insulation will make a massive difference to your costs, that's not in question, the difficulty is trying to translate that to quantifiable values. This is where the variations come in, as it's difficult to get a clear answer on this type of thing, due to the differences in people, and their associated feelings on temperature. Then there's the question of geography, type of heating, type of house construction, the list of variables goes on and on. For example do nothing else, but remove a draught, and most people will say the room is warmer, but as a "measure" it would be difficult to quantify in terms of cost, though easily in confort.

Agreed you could use the basis of the monthly bill, but you have to ask what else has changed?, people often upgrade the heating system at the same time, so which part of the reduction is due to the change in heating efficiency and which is due to the insulation. Difficult to seperate out.

Intersting subject though. In my view, from a comfort level, there's no better money spent than insulation. Everything else being equal even if you have a rusty old boiler / old less efficient heating systems, the less heat you lose the better off you'll be financially

 

[rtbcomp]

...Agreed you could use the basis of the monthly bill, but you have to ask what else has changed?, people often upgrade the heating system at the same time, so which part of the reduction is due to the change in heating efficiency and which is due to the insulation. Difficult to seperate out....

I remember a consumer programme interviewing a lady who had all sorts of stuff done to insulate her house and she complained of larger energy bills afterwards. It transpired she had central heating installed at the same time and was now keeping the whole house warm instead of the one room as previously.

 

[Kent]

You can work everything back from u values and kw potentially saved but it only works at like temperature
The fact is insulation will pay for itself it is just a case of how long
All this comes to nothing if you leave the doors and windows open its down to the weakest point quite obviously
An issue more insulated homes face is ventilation and damp stale air
Passive homes have extraction to combat this that also reclaims the heat lost

Its a very interesting subject but won't save the planet and certainly won't save your wallet presently.

Effective burning of coal and oil is presently the cheapest form of heating and most global warming is from heavy industry and power plants
Cars has always been a con especially the scrapple scheme
It takes a heck of a lot of co2 to make a car compared to fixing one
The problem with the move towards a " green" future is there is a lot of money to be made along the way by various fingers in various pies

 

[Wendelspanswick]

When we did our big building project I downloaded a SAP calculation software package on a free 30 day licence, did my calcs in the 30 day period!
We built our walls with a 100mm cavity and no insulation in the roof, had it all done after for free on the Greendeal as my wife's 86 year old gran lived with us, they filled the cavity's with polystyrene beads and put 270mm of mineral wool in the roof.

 

[the snooper]

When we did our big building project I downloaded a SAP calculation software package on a free 30 day licence, did my calcs in the 30 day period!
We built our walls with a 100mm cavity and no insulation in the roof, had it all done after for free on the Greendeal as my wife's 86 year old gran lived with us, they filled the cavity's with polystyrene beads and put 270mm of mineral wool in the roof.

Make sure you don't have any cables in the cavity, polystyrene causes cable damage

 

[brewdexta]

I plan to rescreed all the floors and incorporate 50mm of insulation and UFH on the slab,

I did this when I refurbished my house about 12 years ago, I wished I had gone 100mm although I did follow the regs at the time, Downstairs I have two different types of construction. Where I could get a machine in to dig I put in a structural slab then 50mm kingspan/celotex then a screed with the wet UFH pipe. In places were it was dug by hand, given my house is built on rock I put 50mm insulation down first, then put the UFH in the structural slab to save depth. The former is better as it responds faster to heat however I believe that your now supposed to put insulation under the structural slab even if you have 50mm insulation then a screed on top, or 100m above to meet 10W per metre3 max downward heat losses.

 

[Kent]

Perhaps it's better to forget about building regs? Most of the wrong bits on my build came from listening to them rather than telling them what I was doing.
If they were much cop they wouldn't change so often would they now? Lol

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Make sure you don't have any cables in the cavity, polystyrene causes cable damage

Building regs stop you from putting cables into a cavity anyway, as it provides a moisture bridge.

 

[the snooper]

Building regs stop you from putting cables into a cavity anyway, as it provides a moisture bridge.

There are houses where the cables reach the upstairs via the cavity

 

[brightspark]

- see loads in cavity walls it isnt recomended for reasons given but it still goes on

http://www.theiet.org/forums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=205&threadid=34892

 

[Bobtail4x4]

We're is the weakest point? If you do super insulation but leave the front door open is the extreme example of this
Fibreglass is nowhere near as good as warm boarding the roof with tri- iso and cellular foil backed foam
Heat rises but I don't know how bad your floor is

Tri Iso is snake oil, they fiddled the test pass, claiming its as good as 10 inch of fibreglass, when tested by others its as good as 2 inch.
other manufacturers making similar stuff agree,

 

[the snooper]

Tri Iso is snake oil, they fiddled the test pass, claiming its as good as 10 inch of fibreglass, when tested by others its as good as 2 inch.
other manufacturers making similar stuff agree,

Who makes it, volkswagon

 

[Kent]

Tri Iso is snake oil, they fiddled the test pass, claiming its as good as 10 inch of fibreglass, when tested by others its as good as 2 inch.
other manufacturers making similar stuff agree,

That's a bold statement pass? It's s published u value if that's not correct that's straight sale of goods misdiscription
A bold statement to make against the product which also has bba approval cert
Exactly what test are you saying they faked here?

 

[Kent]

I wouldn't like to say lacking a suitable brief I did have some involvement with the bba years back it was anything but
Nuffield said I think dangerous territory this