Insulate Your Home

"Loft & Cavity Wall Insulation can dramaticaly reduce heat loss in our homes,  loft Insulation grants are now available!" 

Insulating your house is environmentally friendly, and in colder climates essential, if you want to retain heat in your home.  
Insulating your house is a bit like, putting loads of warm layers on when it's cold. On a cold day most normal people wouldn't dream of going out without a warm coat or jumper, a house should be treated in the same manner.

Did you know that badly insulated homes can cost you hundreds of pounds a year, in terms of wasted heat?
By choosing to have your walls and roof insulated, you can reduce the amount of heat loss in your household dramatically without having to spend much money. It is the most cost effective way we can all reduce energy waste at the same time reducing heating bills.

• Having no loft insulation could lose you around a third of your home’s heating costs
• According to the Energy Saving Trust, between 2002 and 2005 around 800,000 households installed cavity wall

Types of Household insulation

Loft Insulation - As you might expect the involves reducing the amount of heat lost through your roof through rising hot air. Unless you insulate your ceiling and roof this hot air will find its way out of you house quickly. In the winter this means you will have the heating on far longer than you need to, increasing your heating bills. You should insulated your roof with insulation foam at least 250mm thick. Loft insulation grants are now available to help you pay for this.

Central heating Insulation – This involves making sure hot waters stays hot for longer, this can be as simple as insulating a hot water tank with an Industry standard hot water jacket. By applying this Jacket to your hot water cylinder you can reduce heat loss by 75%. The hot water cylinder Jacket should be at least 70mm thick preferably thicker. You can also insulate your pipes in the same manner. This can be trickier as it might involve taking up floor boards, but it’s worth it. Why should you waste your hard earned money by having to constantly re-heat water.

Cavity Wall insulation – heat loss through your house walls is one of the greatest forms of household heat loss. So what is cavity wall insulation?  Most houses have a air gap between walls called a cavity and thus cavity insulation in it's essence it involves filling the gap between the walls of your house with a material designed to insulate your home (like fiberglass), reducing condensation on your walls and create a more sociable temperature.

Glass Fibre

It can even reduce the temperature within your house in the hotter months. Like loft insulation, wall insulation grants are available and, can save you money by reducing heating costs by over 10%, leading to a reduction in CO2 omissions.

Draught Proofing – Most of us have sat near a window on a cold day and felt the cold air from outside penetrate into our homes, the natural reaction is to turn up the thermostat and everything will be OK, Wong! by doing this all you are doing is wasting heat and by association wasting energy. If cold air is getting in, you can bet warm air is flowing out just as quickly. Prevention is the best cure, so you need to find out where the cold air (draft) is getting into your home and block it out. There are various draft proof sealant products available from your local DIY store to aid you in this task.

Double, Triple Glazing - Opting for double or even triple glazing can dramatically reduce heat loss and therefore reduce costs. Double glazing can be expensive, so if you can afford to upgrade all your windows, make sure you concentrate on the windows in the rooms that are heated most often.

Insulation Grants - you can obtain the following grants from the government cavity wall insulation grant, loft insulation grants and other forms of household insulation.
For a full list of energy saving grants go to the Consumer Utility Services website: http://www.cus.net/grants/grants.html or http://www.est.org.uk/