How did you hold up this winter? Being home all day? Thanks to iso 2.0? Have you been cursing about your high energy bills? Or rather rugging up with your thick fleece jumper?
Wouldn’t it be ideal to feel nice and cosy next time around?
Making your home more energy efficient isn’t that hard. Even small changes can have a huge impact on how comfortable your home feels and on your energy bills.
Some of them you can even do yourself. Without needing lots of money or skills.
Firstly, I would be looking at draught sealing and weather-stripping your house.
Replacing windows might be out of your budget. So, start with weather-stripping your windows. Close off walls and ceiling vents. This can make a huge difference.
Old fireplaces can also be a problem. They are literally huge holes in your house.
If you don’t use them, close them off.
Same goes for exhaust fans in the bathrooms or the kitchen. They are money pits. Another hole in the wall. Install self-closing exhaust fans if you can.
It can also help a lot to replace a few windows, if money allows. For instance, the big glazing areas in your living and dining area. Or an old rusty window. Or the ones where the gaps are so huge that you can see light coming in!
Next, look at the insulation. In an ideal world your house should have a continuous insulation layer all around it.
Often this might prove too difficult or too expensive. But again, every bit counts.
The easiest thing is to add insulation to the ceiling/roof. Even if you have insulation there, it might have started to decompose and is not performing as well as it should. I would aim at an R-value of R5.0 or R6.0. Sometimes it might even be cheaper to put two R3.5 layers on top of each other, to create an R7.0.
Then you should look at the walls.
If you replace plasterboard or external wall cladding, installing new insulation is easy.
Yet, if you do not want to touch the existing structure, you still have a few options. If you have roof tiles you can lift the tiles and fill in loose insulation from the top. You can drill little wholes between the studs and then spray insulation in. You have to make sure that the insulation does not fall through. However, this means you will have to close the cavity at the bottom.
The downside to the second option is that you will need to patch up and repaint the walls again. But this will definitely improve the performance of your house a great deal.
Next you should look at the floor. Can you get access underneath the house? If so, fixing batts to the underside of the bearers is easy. You can even do this yourself!
If there is no or limited access it gets harder. The only way would be to lift the floorboards. So, in some cases this might be cost prohibitive.
But even then, you can seal / caulk any visible gaps.
When it comes to installing insulation, it is crucial to get an expert.
Unfortunately, there are many trades people that don’t know what they are doing. Many insulation installers may not have a clue….
If you want to update your house and don’t know where to start please reach out.
We can put you in touch with specialists that can retro fit insulation and draught seal your home.