         
Blog posts in June 2008 by catherinedA large lorry carrying the insulation arrived at 9am this morning. The renovation process has been delayed a little whilst the repairs to the structure of the house are done, so it will be a little while before the insulation is attached to the walls of the house. The insulation is Ecotherm rigid insulation boards. This isn't the most environmentally friendly of materials itself but the carbon savings from the increased insulation will more than make up for this. Also, it is necessary for the insulation to not stick out beyond the reach of the roof tiles if we want to keep the costs affordable.
Blog post by catherined on June 30, 2008 at 12:35 p.m. No comments have been posted yet. More energy is lost through the walls of an ordinary (uninsulated) house than any other part of the house (35%) This surprised me - I thought it would be the roof that was worst! If we wanted to make our house into an ecohouse we needed to do something about this. As our house was built in the 1920s it has solid walls (seemingly like most of the houses in Oxford) so cavity wall insulation is not an option. The outside walls of the house are rendered and the render was in a pretty bad way meaning we could take the chance to replace the render and insulate the external walls at the same time. Because the house was already rendered, there was no need for planning permission. The work is being carried out by Oxford EcoBuild The first stage was to remove the existing render and this took just over 2 days. In fact it was so fast we had to rush out on the second day to take some photos whilst there was still some render left to photograph! It's really interesting to see the house with the red bricks - it looks really nice but it's not at all energy efficient that way! The next stage will be to repair and seal the brickwork and make good any structural problems before adding the insulation.
Blog post by catherined on June 26, 2008 at 10:21 p.m. No comments have been posted yet. We're a family (mum, dad and 2 young children) in Headington, Oxford trying to eco-renovate our home and generally trying to reduce our carbon footprint. I'm particularly interested in looking at how an ordinary home can be changed to be more energy efficient and in growing fruit and veg. I'm really pleased that Low Carbon Headington has just started up and it will be interesting to be in on how it develops. We're about to have some major work done on insulating our house and I hope to write about it here as it happens.
Blog post by catherined on June 25, 2008 at 8:46 p.m. No comments have been posted yet. |