You see these same shortcuts on professionally installed external insulation. It's hard to quantify just how much they compromise the overall effectiveness of the insulation but my feeling is that the money would often have been better spent elsewhere.
Another point in favour of waiting for new materials is that Kingspan/Celotex, which I believe is the standard material, is foul stuff that will probably pollute our environment until the end of time.
Possibly although the standard argument is that the reduction in pollution due to the energy efficiencies they allow outweighs this.
You can use brick slips but it costs a lot more than plain render.
yes they are an option - and I think there might be a good argument for using them instead of render on the basis that they will weather better - but if the aim is to recreate an attractive 150 year old facade you are not going to do it with brick slips. The bricks will not look the same, it'll not be practical to replicate decorative details and adding thickness to a facade has lots of knock on effects to other details, such as at roof eaves. If the aim is to preserve historic facades (and of course some people just don't think this is a worthy aim in the first place) then I would not see replicating with brick slips as a way of achieving it.
Livingston New Town, the houses are built with no fines concrete. Cheap and quick to build, but with zero insulation.
Yes, rightly or wrongly it's not considered to be a major issue as long as fire engine ladders can reach the windows. But also if it is a rendered finish that is a fire-proof covering so I think it's unlikely to be a problem - Grenfell had both flammable insulation and flammable panels over the top.
Yes, but the fire risk depends on how they are installed. At Grenfell it was installed with an air cavity in front of it which became very significant in how the fire spread. Plus it had what turned out to be flammable cladding in front of that. In the standard external insulation with render build-up, there's no air gap so no easy route for fire to get in. The render would have to physically fall off before the insulation could really catch fire. I expect that would happen eventually in a serious fire but not with the speed seen at Grenfell and by that point you'd need to have everyone out of the building anyway.
This is a place down the road from where I used to live in Leeds that was done with brick slips. As an end terrace I guess it got pretty cold previously. Doesn’t look that great tbh, mortar and brick colour are a poor match.You can use brick slips but it costs a lot more than plain render.
O_O
Houses like that one aren’t much more than a hundred grand round there, so there’s a limit to how much value you can add with work like this, I suspect a labour of love rather than a considered financial investment (a bit like my fifteen grand bathroom in a similar place).
We’re sticking french doors in so there won’t actually be that much wall left to insulate, a few square meters plus trim.
Yeah we got some new windows put in recently and the installing company insisted they could only install on the outer wall of the cavity wall. That's what they always do and they weren't prepared to consider doing anything else, even though the original windows of the house are placed across the cavity. Seems to me their way basically creates a quite uninsulated edging to the window. Not that I'm convinced the originals are well insulated either, as I don't think the cavity wall insulation comes snugly up to the window frames. I'm guessing that both of these issues are normal and contractors don't care.
yes it means the outer leaf of the wall makes a cold bridge around the perimeter of the window and aside from losing heat it's a good way of encouraging condensation to gather there. It's easier to install like that because you just put screws straight through the frames and into the masonry. But the windows should be at least partly overlapping with the cavity insulation and there should be insulated cavity closers all around the opening. Normally you use metal lugs or fixing brackets to allow you to fix the window in a location that's offset from the masonry. It's not very complicated to do, but if you haven't bought in to the idea that it matters, then it just seems like an annoying extra step, and another component to remember to order before doing the job.
