This is the start of a long-ish journey

Insulate the house, and document the process. That’s the challenge. I’ve taken the first few steps on the house but I’m months behind on the writing up, so here we go.

Like a lot of people working from home unexpectedly, I’ve now shivered through two lock-down winters with one eye on my zoom meeting and the other on the gas bill. At some unidentifiable point in that process I resolved to do something about it. My motivations are a mixture of wanting to save money, wanting to save the planet and just plain wanting to be warmer. Luckily, fixing one should fix the others ¹.

The challenge of old houses

Our house is not ridiculously cold or inefficient by the standards of these things, it is a fairly typical British home, but it is also not a very warm or economical house either. The old parts are draughty, especially the suspended wooden floor downstairs, it is heated by fossil fuels and it’s the type of “old housing stock” which is considered “impractical to insulate further” (pretty much the exact words of our surveyor when we bought it about 10 years ago).

Reading about what can be achieved in the best of modern housing is eye opening, but short of moving to the country and building some sort of hyper-efficient monstrosity worthy of Grand Designs, I thought we’d done all we could with our venerable old house. We had the loft insulated (and later extended), there was reasonably modern UPVC double glazing in place when we moved in. We don’t have cavity walls so cavity insulation wasn’t an option ². So I thought that that was the end of it. Pathetically unambitious there Andrew.

The potential of old houses

So I did more reading, strangely most of it during the lovely warm summer of 2021. It gradually became clear that insulating old houses isn’t impossible, or even impractical as our surveyor once suggested. It might require some determination and a little disruption, it will need some investment and lots of attention to detail, but it’s possible, it’s worth doing, and I’m going to have a go.

And I would predict that it’s only going to get easier as the demand increases. The availability and experience of skilled trades will improve and new materials will come down in cost and go up in performance. There are tens of thousands of almost identical houses in our local area built during the inter-war years, and I’m sure they’re typical of millions more across the country. Thats a lot of potential to save money and save the planet. I’m happy to be a little ahead of the rush and to have a slightly harder time.

Constraints: Renovation has to work with family life and budgets

We don’t have infinite disposable income and I can’t gut the house of all its walls and floors, we need to live in our house while any work is happening. I’m not aiming for passivehaus certification (awesome though passive houses are). I’m OK at DIY but my wife and I have jobs and two children, which means we don’t have much free time.

I have help

I’m not doing this alone. I’m good at dreaming and enthusiasm, but not quite so good at getting stuff finished. All my greatest achievements were obtained with somebody else’s boot-print in my backside, so let me introduce my two secret weapons:

First is my wife Emma, She’s on board with the project (especially having a warmer house, we think she was a cat in a past life), she approves of the environmental and financial motives and best of all, she’s a completer-finisher and project manager by day. Making sure stuff gets done is her speciality. However, she’s completely disinterested in the details and physics of insulating old buildings, so let me move on to the second secret weapon:

I hired an insulation consultant. It made sense to me, I’m a consultant myself by profession, and strongly believe in reaching out for expert help if that will save time and money in the long run. I was lucky enough to hire Andy Walker of Sure Insulation, to do a review of the whole house and provide a report of recommended actions. It was the best money I’ve spent so far. Andy provided an incredibly useful and detailed report and, even more importantly, a great deal of encouragement that what I’m hoping to do is achievable and worthwhile. At some point in the future I’ll write to compare my original plan for the house, and my plan for the house after Andy offered his advice.

There aren’t many such specialists out there, (Andy is unfortunately on a break from consulting right now to focus on other projects) but if you can find someone to help you I highly recommend it.

Let’s get started

So that’s it, I’ve shared the plan with the whole world, now all I have to do is make good on it. Please wish me luck and cheer me on, and if I bugger it up, or get stuck, don’t let that put you off having a go yourself with your own home.

I’ve already completed two suuuuuuuuuper easy jobs which need writing up, putting thin insulation behind all the radiators, and draught proofing around the toilet waste pipe (glamorous stuff). Hopefully they’ll appear here soon.