Solid Wall Insulation

Insulating your solid walls could cut your heating costs considerably, and make your home more comfortable.

If your home was built before the 1920s, its external walls are most probably solid walls rather than cavity walls.

Cavity walls are made of two layers with a small gap or ‘cavity’ between them, solid walls have no gap so they cannot be filled with cavity wall insulation.

The answer for solid walls to insulate them from either side of the wall, either on the inside or the outside.

Solid wall insulating does cost more than cavity wall insulation but will save you a lot more money.

We can call out and see what walls you have so then can rule it if you have any cavity wall insulation.

If you want to check yourself and you can see your brickwork on the outside of the house, look at the pattern of the bricks because this can show how the wall has been built.

Cavity Wall

If your home has cavity walls, the bricks will usually have an even pattern with all the bricks laid lengthways.

Solid Wall

If your home has solid walls, the bricks will have an alternating pattern, with some bricks laid across the wall so you can see the smaller ends from the outside.

If you cannot see the brickwork because it has been covered with cladding or render or something else, you can also tell by measuring the width of the wall. Examine a window or door on one of your external walls.

If you measure a brick wall and it is more than 260mm thick then it is most likely a cavity wall, if its any narrower then the wall is probably a solid wall. Stone walls may also be thicker still but are usually solid.

Costs and Savings

Typical installation costs* of solid wall insulation can vary as follows:

*Based on a typical semi-detached house in Great Britain

Savings in England, Scotland and Wales

Internal wall insulation is done by fitting rigid insulation boards to the wall, or by building a stud wall filled in with insulation material such as mineral wool fibre.

Internal wall is generally cheaper to install than external wall insulation but will slightly reduce the floor area of any rooms in which it is applied  (the thickness of the insulation is around 100mm). We always try to work with the minimum disruption but it will require skirting boards, door frames and external fittings to be removed and reattached.

Please note this work will not solve rising damp problems without the problem of that being dealt with first.

External wall insulation is done by fixing a layer of insulation material to the wall, then covering it with a special type of render (plasterwork) or cladding of your choice.

The finish can be smooth, textured, painted, tiled, panelled, pebble-dashed, or finished with brick slips.

External insulation has lots of other benefits as well like:

It reduces condensation on internal walls and can help prevent damp but will not solve rising or penetrating damp.

Things to note: