Home Insulation
Understanding cost-effectiveness is an important consideration when thinking about insulation. Although insulation costs money to install, it can provide two important benefits.
Heating bills can be reduced as there will be less heat wasted from inside the house, and less fuel will have to be used to maintain internal temperatures. The annual saving on heating bills will effectively pay back the cost of having insulation installed. Also, having better insulation means that you can have a less powerful and therefore less expensive boiler when you come to replace your heating system, which will be an indirect saving.
Decent insulation does not necessarily involve huge expense. The most effective elements of good insulation are fairly cheap, and save money over the longer term. You should insulate any water storage tanks in the roof space to protect them from freezing, and padded jackets are available in most DIY stores for this. Exposed pipe work in the roof space should also be insulated, usually by fitting them with ready-made sleeves which come in various standard diameters.
Loose-fill insulation is sold in bags and you simply pour it between the joists and then level it off with their top surfaces. Be warned that dusty types like vermiculite can be messy to work with.
Blanket insulation consists of standard width rolls of rock, mineral or glass fibre and is unrolled between the joists. A typical roll is between 6 and 8 metres in length, but you can also get short lengths called batts. A face mask, protective clothing and gloves need to be worn when laying this insulation.
Slab insulation consists of light and easy to handle slabs, but can cause skin irritation in some cases, as can their blanket equivalents. The width of the slabs matches the usual joist spacings.