Cavity wall Insulation: Everything One Should Know

Installing wall insulation is one of the most cost-effective improvements you can make to your home, with many disregarding the extra savings and related benefits that having a full wall insulation can provide for them. But having good insulation is something that is often overlooked by the homeowners. The cost of insulating your home's walls depend entirely on the size of your home and whether the walls are cavity or solid and their condition until now.

If you have a brick house built after 1930, then there is a high chance that you are a proud owner of cavity walls with poor insulation qualities. For such homes or properties, a solution like external wall insulation and internal wall insulation exist. However, cavity wall insulation is essential for the homes built with an external wall insulation that consisted of two smaller walls with a gap in between. Such type of insulation is quick and fairly easy to install. They reduce the percentage of heat loss from home, cut down your energy bills and lower the carbon footprint. But how it works? And is your home efficient for installing such type of insulation? Your answer lies below: 

How cavity wall insulation works?

Air plays the role of a natural insulator, which means heat doesn't pass through the air easily. The best way to keep your body warm during cold is to wear several layers of clothing. This is because the layers capture the air in between them and keep it inside. Cavity wall insulation functions in a similar way. The wool-like material used, traps air in between its fibers to produce an air-matrix. That's why this type of insulation is much more effective in holding heat than vacant cavity walls.

How to know if I have cavity walls?] 

Before you finalize to insulate the cavity walls, you should get sure whether your home has them or not. One hint is the age of your house. As mentioned above if you have a house built between 1930-80, there is a good chance that you have hollow cavity walls. And after the 1980s, new building regulations were passed where the rule made was to build every new house with good insulation material inside the walls. 

If you certainly do not remember the age of your house, another way to know is by seeing the brick structure of your outside walls. In a typical cavity wall, all the bricks will look the same, with the long side of the brick visible on the outside. And in solid walls, the bricks will be in an alternating long-short pattern. 

What if the brickwork doesn't get visible for some reason? In such a case, take a close look at the thickness of your exterior walls. This gets done by looking at a window or a doorway. If the thickness is more than approx. 260mm, there are the chances of having cavity walls. 

Cavity wall insulation is probably one of the most cost-effective methods of cutting down your fuel bills, providing a sound investment with possibly the best return for your money. So, the sooner you will install, the quicker you will start saving money.