Warmcel?

[Annpan]

Anyone know anything about it, has anyone used it?

We need something to stick down inbetween our attic walls and the roof (bedrooms are in the attic) We currently have NO insulation, and its co-o-o-o-old.

We are trying to figure out how to do it without disturbing the rooms too much.

Any thoughs or ideas?

Thanks




For those who don't know - warmcel is a loose, recycled paper insulation. One of the greenest and cheapest solutions on the market.

[baldowrie]

if you have no insulation you should be able to get a grant from the local council.

The stuff I had pumped into ,my cavity walls some years back looks like that although it wasn't called warmcel. I got a 50% grant through the electricity board for it as we had electric heating. My winter quarter electricity bill dropped dramatically and it paid for it's self in the first year...drafty old house

[Annpan]

Thanks but unfortunately I am not able to get a grant, as it is in the roof void it is not a techincally cavity wall I am not actually able to get any grants, crappy I know, but I have looked. Although it being a DIY product does make it much cheaper at the outset.

I have been looking for info elsewhere on the web and can't find out if warmcel is suitable where it will come into contact with the underside of our roof... ie sarking, which has VPU then slate ontop.

[baldowrie]

can't answer that but I had in both cavity and in the loft and the guy said it was water proof and rodent resistant...unfortunately he didn't tell the mice during the winter (perils of country life)

Mine was injected into the wall and sprayed in the loft

[Archie]

I should persist with the grants, Ann...my local council are throwing money at householders and tenants for insulation improvements, both as sold and DIY.
And Scotland has always been ahead in this game.

[baldowrie]

this is the group that did mine years ago

http://www.markgroup.co.uk/insulation/f ... MAodMjxdVw

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Diol1/DoItOnline/DG_4017263

[Annpan]

Ok so maybe it is just me but...

My electricity provider will provide a grant towards a contracter coming in to do the insulation... only for 'loft insulation', or 'cavity wall' insulation though, neither of which we have - as the rooms are in the attic with our bedroom walls fitted directly onto the rafters, so we can only insulate inbetween the rafters for the time being as we have no immediate plans to rip out the upstairs walls to do something abit more permenant.

The government or local councils will only provide grants for people on benefits, or working peoples tax credit (ie household income of less than £15000) or if you are over 60.

I don't want lectured by yet more workmen coming into my house telling me what to do, we currently don't even have ceilings in the downstairs rooms, the walls ar bare stone and standing in the living room if you look up you can see the sarking boards and the light coming through the ventilation gap at the bottom. We plan not to insulate the rear roof as we couldn't afford to re-roof it so it has no underlay and so needs ventilation to stop the dryrot growing in there... the spores can stay viable for upto 2 years after the last fruiting occured.

I don't mean to be snappy guys, thanks for the advice, and the links, but I followed them and got exactly the same information as I had before.

Warmcel can also be reused ... so... if in a few years we chose to come back and properly insulate by taking down the walls upstairs the warmcel can be bagged up and reused in another part of the house, as top up, or in a workshop or chicken house in the garden.

We are trying our best to be smart about this, and we have already argued with the council about another grant we were entiltled to but they refused us.

Sorry for the long post, thanks again, but to return to my previous question, does anyone know anything about warmcel?

[Stonehead]

AnnPan, we're in a similar situation and have had the same response in enquiring about grants for insulation. If you have a traditional Scottish one-and-three quarter storey house built of stone with bedrooms under the eaves, then you're on your own.

The grant schemes are based on cavity walls and flat-floored lofts with no rooms above the floor.

To make matters worse, not having cavity wall and loft insulation can rule you out of other grant schemes as well - such as the DTI's Low Carbon Buildings Programme. (Not that it's much good anyway.)

But back to the question. No one has been able to tell us if blown insulation can be put in the space between the bedroom ceilings and the sarking. Instead, we've been told to either remove the ceilings or remove the roof and install insulation rolls, batts, boards and wraps.

There's a similar problem with the flat-roofed extension at the back - either remove the ceiling or roof (preferably the roof) and then install insulation. However, it may be possible to glue insulation boards to the underside of the ceiling.

It does amaze me that no one has bothered to come up with effective solutions for post-construction insulation for either roof type, which are quite common after all.

[Stonehead]

And one thing I forgot to mention. If you have builders or insulation fitters in, watch them like a hawk.

Our place had the roof raised just before we moved in and the roof space was supposedly fitted with insulation to the required standards. It's not. The builders fitted insulation around the inspection hatches so it looks right, but there's no insulation anywhere else.

We had a full survey done and it was missed because the surveyor opened the hatches, saw the insulation and went "tick". The small print of the contract meant they had no responsibility if the survey had any omissions or errors.

Grrrr!

[Annpan]

Bloody mad isn't it stonehead, thanks for your reply, at least now I know its not just me.

Not sure if this is any use to you but while I was doing my research I came across this website

Enclosed cavities:

For enclosed cavities, including sloping roof voids, Warmcel 500 is dry-injected under pressure to completely fill the void.

Warmcel 500 is specifically designed for this type of application , but it needs to be proffesionally installed.


Its no good to me because the house is a building site just now and it was never supposed to be and we are trying to piece it together as best as we can.

I will carry on my hunt to find a reasonable DIY solution.

Thanks again

[Muddypause]

Annpan - I'm not quite sure I follow where you need the insulation to go. Is it in the gap between the sloping ceiling and the sarking, or is it the triangular space behind a vertical wall with roof space behind it? Or have I missed the point entirely? Can you access the space, or is it hidden behind boarding and stuff?

If getting insulation into an inaccessible space is the problem, maybe some type of thermal laminate plasterboard would be offer a work around. There are various makers of this, and it's basically a sheet of plasterboard with a layer of insulation bonded to the back of it. It comes in various thicknesses, and ideally you would apply it instead of the normal plasterboard, but I guess with a bit of careful thought, you could apply it on top of what is already there. You'd lose a little space, and you'd need to sort out how the extra thickness worked out around doors and windows, etc.

There's a similar problem with the flat-roofed extension at the back - either remove the ceiling or roof (preferably the roof) and then install insulation. However, it may be possible to glue insulation boards to the underside of the ceiling.

Is it a conventional bitumen felt-covered flat roof? What about 'warm roof' insulation? Basically, you install the insulation on top of the flat roof. The type I'm familiar with is a rigid foam insulation which lays on top of the structure of the roof and is then covered in roofing felt in the normal way.

Ideally, you'd do this when the roof needs re-felting anyway, so that much of the cost of the job is absorbed in the work that needed doing. But apparently there is a version that can go on top of the felt - there are various proprietary systems that you'll find with a bit of help from Google, but they are expensive. But at its simplest, it's nothing more than polyurethane-ish foam with a sheet of something stiff on top so it can take light loads without crushing, so I don't see what would stop you buying sheets of foam insulation, capping it with 6mm plywood and felting over the top.

[Stonehead]

Is it in the gap between the sloping ceiling and the sarking, or is it the triangular space behind a vertical wall with roof space behind it? Or have I missed the point entirely? Can you access the space, or is it hidden behind boarding and stuff?

If it's like our place, a bit of both. The spaces are not generally accessible, although we do have a couple of inspection hatches and with a lot of wriggling it's just possible to get yourself into the void at the base of the wall, between it and the roof slope.

If getting insulation into an inaccessible space is the problem, maybe some type of thermal laminate plasterboard would be offer a work around. There are various makers of this, and it's basically a sheet of plasterboard with a layer of insulation bonded to the back of it. It comes in various thicknesses, and ideally you would apply it instead of the normal plasterboard, but I guess with a bit of careful thought, you could apply it on top of what is already there. You'd lose a little space, and you'd need to sort out how the extra thickness worked out around doors and windows, etc.

That's the stuff I was talking about. I was told it may be possible to glue it to the existing walls and ceiling. It will offer a definite improvement over no insulation but not as much as removing the existing walls and filling the voids behind them with insulation.

Is it a conventional bitumen felt-covered flat roof? What about 'warm roof' insulation? Basically, you install the insulation on top of the flat roof. The type I'm familiar with is a rigid foam insulation which lays on top of the structure of the roof and is then covered in roofing felt in the normal way.

We've been told it's a bit more compicated than that and it's better to remove the existing roofing altogether. And if you're doing that, you can then fill the voids between the rafters with insulation anyway.

And, as you say, the externally applied insulation is expensive.


I'll have to have a look at the Warmcel 500 and see if anyone around here can install it.

[Annpan]

Hi Muddy

Does this diagram help?


It is, as Stonehead says a standard setup in Scotland and I can't beieve that it is this complex to insulate

The 2 main problems are
Ventilation, which we thought we would get around by using a vpu, which is a type of felt that allows moisture to evapourate through it and our architect tells us you can put insulation right up to it, negating the need for a ventilation shaft. or for ventilating tiles on the roof.

Nails, the nails that hold on the slates come out from the back of the sarking by about 1 1/2" making any solid insulation installation rather difficult.

The only access that we have is through the back and top of a cupboard that has been built into the eaves, parts of the ceiling will have to be removed and insulation put up, 1 handfull at a time. We currently have access through the living room ceiling too as we have yet to line it. All the acces is gained by squeezing through rafters or joists which are only 30cm apart and some of them have recently been repaired (by bolting new parts on to the original) so the space is even more limited

The best way that we have found to do it 'correctly' is to remove the bedroom walls, put standard rockwool in between each of the rafters and then use 20mm Kingspan over the top of the rafters followed by plasterboard finish. This setup would meet current building standards for insulation and loose the least amount of space in the bedroom. - We figured this out before we found Kingspan 500, which might be an ever better permanant solution.

That said, we have a toddler, a few enormous loans, no usable livingroom and no hotwater. At the moment our priority is to get the house warm and dry for winter, and to have a livingroom that E can crawl around in, in time for christmas.

So we are looking for a clever, reusable, quickfix that will stop the heat disappearing now.

[Stonehead]

The best way that we have found to do it 'correctly' is to remove the bedroom walls, put standard rockwool in between each of the rafters and then use 20mm Kingspan over the top of the rafters followed by plasterboard finish. This setup would meet current building standards for insulation and loose the least amount of space in the bedroom. - We figured this out before we found Kingspan 500, which might be an ever better permanant solution.

Your diagram is spot on, although it does exaggerate the space slightly and doesn't numerous compartmentalised voids that result from this building style.

As for the advice on insulating, your advice is exactly the same as what we were told.



One thing I forgot to mention earlier was the the house was properly insulated a few years back after a fire destroyed the non-stone parts of the main house. The builders employed by the insurance company put 100mm of rockwool between the studs, behind the plasterboard and the stone walls. They also insulated the roof.

But as we found out a year after we moved in, the then owner didn't like the rooms being slightly smaller so he ripped out the plasterboard, studding and insulation, then put thinner studding and new plasterboard back up without the insulation.

Owners between him and us didn't realise, and we only found out when someone told us they'd seen him dumping the plasterboard and insulation at the time. He told them what he was doing - to their bemusement.

So, if he'd left things alone and the builders who raised the roof hadn't been cowboys, we'd have a very well insulated house. Instead, we have a fairly cold one. It's not that wasteful in some ways as we don't heat it very much, wear loads of sweaters and sit with blankets over our knees, but we could have been much warmer for the energy we do use.

The only real hassle is that the toilet cistern can freeze in the depths of winter.

[snapdragon]

slight derail not warmcel
but
There's a wool fleece based product called thermafleece (utilizing otherwise unwanted upland sheep's wool) - it comes in batts so should be easier to fit than a loose fill product, I'm looking into it to use between rafters, adding insulation and making it possible for us to gain the use of otherwise wasted loft space