Final details

I put some foil behind the radiator to reflect radiant heat rather than warming the wall. Also a small shelf to stop the heat going behind the curtains (in the long run we will put up thicker lined curtains). The final expense was laying a thick wool carpet with a decent underlay. While this only has a small effect on the overall insulation it does make it feel a lot warmer underfoot.

The room is now complete and as I said it will take years to cover the costs it does make a huge difference so the room never feels as cold as it used to so it will get used more often. And as someone once said to me how long does it take for a new kitchen to pay for itself.

Views of the underfloor

You can get some idea of the underfloor form this photo but it's not the easiest place to take photos. All the pipes were insulated and then covered with bags of insulation. Finally I insulated the access hatches.

Underfloor insulation

Now the walls are finished it is time to do the floor.
The design means that I can cut small access hatches in the floor and then just get underneath the floor. I started by putting insulation between the joists and held it in with stapled skrim. This was very effective but a really horrible job as I only had a few inches to spare so my face was in mineral wool and it is difficult to work in those conditions with goggles and face mask. So we came up with cutting the insulation in 600mm lengths and put it in black bin bags and then stapled them in between the joists. which was much easier.

The finished room

The wall was then reboarded, skim coated and painted. So £300 later the room looks exactly the same a before and £10.00 worth of insulation has been installed.
There is no way that this can be saved in the short or even medium term but the room will be more comfortable. It will be interesting to see how much difference it makes.

Electric back boxes

While the wall was down I replaced the the electrics with better wiring and fixing the back boxes.I put the back boxes so they stuck out a bit so that marking the plasterboards is easier. The wiring was fixed against the studs to prevent overheating.

Small cavities

There was some small voids above the window and I filled them Kingspan offcuts I found in a skip. I cut them just a little on the large side and then hammered them in so that there was no gaps (even small gaps can massively diminish the effectiveness of the insulation) I really cannot believe that the window needs that many 4 x 2s above the window.

Vapour barrier added

Once we had the insulation in we then installed the vapour barrier we are using a very thick polythene usually used for ground cover under foundations (I got it cheap at the local boot sale) The edges were stuck down with a thick layer of sealer and the stapled.The polythene being very thick is much less likely to tear. The difficult bit is sealing around the electrical sockets so I used a mixture of polythene sealer and gaffer tape.

Insulation installed

After modifying the electrics the wall was fully insulated with mineral wool. This was dirt cheap from B&Q £10.00. I did consider using a polyurethane panel such as Kingspan but it would have needed so much cutting and trimming I was not sure that in the end it would have performed much better and would have cost a lot more.

New studs

The existing timber frame was built in Canada and was therefore made to imperial sizes. 8ft x 4ft. (2440 x 1220) current plasterboards are 2400 x 1200 so there would be a lot of waste so new studs were put in sideways at the correct spacings (1200 centres)

The existing insulation

The small amount of insulation can be seen here. it is nailed to the external ply sheathing. There is no vapor barrier and it is standard plasterboard.

Removing the Plasterboard

First we had to remove all the plasterboard. Unfortunately there is nothing to do with it but take it to the dump. Having removed it all we could see if there was any problem with the wall. It was all perfect no sign of rot condensation etc. ( I don't know what the fault is with this photo I think there must have been water on the lens)

Insulate a Timber Frame Wall

I live in a late 70s Timber Frame Bungalow. I assumed that the 100mm stud walls were filled with insulation but when I started working on the house I found that there was only about 20mm of mineral wool insulation.I have asked the local energy advice centre what to do but they were very unhelpful suggesting a very thin insulating wall paper.
We tried pumping in Cavity Wall insulation through the plasterboard but it didn't work. So after toying with blowing in polystyrene beads for a while we have decided the best way is to remove the plasterboard and insulate the wall.