The Many Benefits Of Installing Thermal Wall Insulation

By Author: Andy Guy
Total Articles: 3
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Despite the fact that the papers are full of stories about climate change and global warming, the fact is that a lot of Britain has winters which can be very cold, windy, and wet. This means that families have to spend a lot of money on heating their homes in the winter in order to remain comfortable. Of course, heating uses energy, whether it is gas or electricity or solid fuel, and using energy is not cheap.

One way in in which many families are now overcoming the problem of using so much energy is by insulating the walls of their homes so that the home doesn’t lose so much heat. It is estimated that, on average, around a third of all the heat in a home is lost through the walls, so by reducing that loss it means using less energy which in turn means spending less money. There are three ways in which to insulate a wall, and this can be done by adding insulation inside the home or to the outside of the walls.

Insulation can also be added to cavity walls inside the cavity itself. The type of walls that you have – solid or cavity – depends largely on the age of your home. If it was built before about 1920 ...
... it will have solid walls, but if it was built after that period, most homes were built with cavity walls. This has the outer wall built of brick or stone and the inner wall of brick or concrete block with a gap between the two.

Adding thermal wall insulation in Guildford to a cavity wall is a fairly straightforward job for a specialist installer. He will drill small holes in the outer wall of about 22mm about 1m to 1.5m apart and then using a special machine will blow the insulation material through the holes and into the cavity, filling it up. The insulation material is usually mineral wool or polystyrene beads but may also be of polyurethane foam. For a specialist, the whole process on an average home with walls which are easy to access will only take a couple of hours. The holes in the walls are then filled with cement and will be hardly noticeable.

Whether you have solid walls or whether you have cavity walls, you can always add thermal insulation to the outside wall. Adding external wall insulation is a great way to cut down on your heating bills and it also has a great benefit if you live next to a railway line, busy main road, or under an aeroplane flight path because it will cut down considerably on the amount of external noise coming into the home. For the same reason, if you are going to replace your double glazing at the same time as adding external insulation, you might want to consider triple glazing. Yes, it is more expensive, obviously, but will reduce extraneous noise even further.

Adding external wall insulation to your home has another benefit too, and that is that when you heat your home the walls become heated, but now that heat cannot escape. When you turn the heating off, the heat which has been built up and stored in the walls is slowly released back into the home, keeping it at a more even temperature.

Another benefit of adding thermal insulation is that it is usually finished with a coat of render, so not only are you doing the practical job of reducing energy bills, but your home will now have the perfect finish to it. You can have the render in any colour you wish, and it can be finished smooth or with a decorative finish as well.

UK Spray Rendering is the leading installer of external thermal wall insulation in England and Wales and can provide you with thermal wall insulation in Guildford as well. Once the insulation has been added this can be finished off with a spray render in the colour of your choice. The render can also have decorative effects such as stippling or swirls if you wish.