Cost of living crisis/kWh Measuring Contest

Interesting - a damp specialist who did some work on my old victorian cottage was pretty scathing, and my mum's 1930s bungalow suffers after they had it done.  Wind direction may explain some of the condensation we get at the front of our house, which is SW facing.  Pointing etc is fine but...

edit: I see some of this has been covered!

All I can say is that I've had zero problems with either condensation or mould in my house after having cavity wall insulation done, and neither have any of my neighbours who had it done that I know of.

It is however often touted as a kind of magic bullet solution for wall insulation and I suspect it's actually just one option out of many that *can* be a benefit in some situations and cause issues in others.

We're probably just lucky that the orientation of the street means the front of the houses rarely get wet!

Maybe not PPI as there is a vested interest from local and national government to have things like this done to meet targets, but there is definitely a section of society adversely affected by cavity fill insulation.

I am one of them. It was noted on the home report as having been done and I was nervous about buying it because of that but we did. At the end of the year, christmas day actually, I noticed a mushroom growing out the gap between the wallpaper at the wall and the ceiling in the kitchen.

The previous people had put this really thick paper on the walls to try and disguise the problem and it worked! I took the paper off and the wall was a mess. Black mould everywhere and you could have wrung the brick out it was so wet.

Lont story short, I paid a company to come in and take it all out. 2.5K over the course of a week and the place started drying out straight away. I had an inspection camera to monitor it all over a year or so and now we have a dry but cold house as opposed to a slightly less cold but damp house.

Here's another thought. A modern external wall might have a brick outer leaf, then a 50mm clear cavity, then maybe 120 - 150mm insulation (rigid PIR or stone wool type) then a solid board on the outside of the frame, then 100mm insulation within the timber frame then maybe even an insulated plasterboard on the inside. All in maybe 250mm to 300mm of high performance insulation. What impact is max 50mm of plastic bead blown in 'blind' to the cavity making?

I'm planning internal solid wall insulation, and window replacement. There is relatively new vacuum double glazing that is super thin, better insulation than regular triple glazing, and stays insulating for longer.

Cancel culture got them in the end

West of Scotland. Yes, you're totally right that location will have an influencing factor on performance. The thing is the people putting it in don't take this into account. I had agencies phoning up wanting to cavity fill in the tenement flat I had at the time. Good luck with that.

As well as location, the quality of the install has an impact too. Mine wasn't filled up completely which made for cold spots which can affect the balance of the walls performance and induce mould.

I'm not saying people are stupid for getting it done. Plenty have it, get benefit from it and that's good. If it goes bad though it can go very bad.

You'll laugh when you see the quotes. 2 rooms - £6,000.

Doesn’t get me my octopus.

1 room - 3k.
2 rooms - 6k.

And if you squint hard enough, the black mould looks a lot like deluxe flock wallpaper.

Anal.

Not hebden, his have been spray filled.

Pretty much this. They wanted more money for doing more rooms. I assume 3 rooms would have been £9k.

My boiler has five different settings, 1 to 5 basically. The obvious thing to do is turn it down one which I would other than the fact the one it's on now (3) is also badged with the letter E which I assume stands for Economy. So to turn it down would be turning it off the economy setting. Might Google an instruction book and start paying more attention to this shit.