Yes, but what happens if your draughty Victorian house is in a Conservation area, or heaven forbid, listed? Should we be relaxing planning laws, or should the insulation market be looking to produce products that are more aesthetically pleasing and/or acceptable to conservation officers?

We own a mark 2 steel framed house and cannot insulate the wall cavity because this would affect the temperature of the steel frame.we believe that there are approx. 20,000 houses like ours in the country, and please, please would someone come up with some help !

I am refurbishing an old victorian house in a conservation area. I am insulating the walls and the roof but am having huge difficulties trying to persuade my conservation officer that double glazing (heritage slim line) in new wooden casement windows is imperative....it is so frustrating when I am spending a lot of time and money to do my bit for the planet. She is concerned about the difference in reflection....even though only a tiny percentage of the windows are overlooked. It really is mind boggling

I think that the typical homeowner seeking ideas would prefer much more information than that given above.
An idea of what systems are available and approximate costs would help.

There's a number of people eco-renovating their homes; many of them put details of their work on the internet at this site. Check the case-studies for inspiration!
(I'm not from ecovation)

I am in the middle of doing an ECO Retrofit to my house and have had to submit for planning permission. This involves external wall insulation and rain screen cladding - Cedar and render, along with Solar panels on the roof. This changes the look of the house and the planning office has recommended refusal because its contary to policy as specified by the Local development Framework (now out of date and under revision) "... the plan will be permitted providing it ... (ii) in terms of design and layout responds to the charater, appearance and variety of the local environment". BTW, we are not in a conservation area.

If we're going to upgrade our housing stock, then ultimately there are times when there is no or limited choice about what happens to the aesthetics. I suggest there are parallels to wind turbines - we don't want it on our back yard.

(I'm blogging at www.greenhonediary.com)

eco-refurbed a terrace house back in 1994 (yes – we have known about global warming for that long!!). I removed all plaster to external walls & replaced it with polyurethane- backed plasterboard. It wasn’t such an onerous task as I had to replace the DPC & windows anyway as well as a rear chimney breast. If you do the work yourself the costs aren’t too high as you’re not paying for a plasterer (apart from the skimming). The radiators are tiny & the heating bills are about 30% of what they should be.

I have since done partial internal insulation to a further 2 terraced houses & plan to insulate all internal walls when I can find the time. I originally used plaster dabs as a fixing method but now use timber battens to fix to.

I have though replaced all my horrid 1970s plastic covered metel, single glazed(!!) windows with gorgeous wooden double glazed sash windows. You do have to look around but they are out there. They are expensive so I had to do it as, and when I could afford them, but I am deaply in love with them. They cost about £1000 per window, but I am sure there are carpenters out there that could be cheaper, mine was local firm and I like that idea. This year I had window boxes for the first time and grew tomatoes in them! I also feel safer as they would allow me to get out incase of a fire which many UPVC designs don't.

I am very intersted in the fact one can insulate 'solid walls'. I am end of terrace and I wish I had known that it could be done when we spent money on some beautiful plastering about 15 years ago. So I am reluctant to take if all off now, but if I need to re-do any I will certainly go for this idea. In the meantime I find books are pretty good!!

I have spent the last year investigating the different options for solid wall insulation and still have not found the best solution. Can anyone tell me definitively what is the BEST PRODUCT out there? I too live in a conservation area and know that changing the appearance of my brick house will be unacceptable to planners. The whole thing is still too difficult to fathom and we have too many hoops to jump through. Please Government, make it easier for those of us eager to improve our homes.

Pretty website, but lacking in any substance.

It just seems to say "saving energy is a good thing". I am convinced, which is why I am looking at it in the first place.

An example of real help needed. I am looking to have my solid walls insulated. I get refered to another site. It also tells me it is a good idea. It list manufacturers of the products, but nothing about local installers. So I am left looking for a local builder, who may have had prior experience of one supplier or another, just to get a quote.

So for the last 18 months, I have done nothing about it!

First of all some helpful links:
There is lots of good discussion of low energy refurbishment on the aecb website: perhaps start here: http://www.aecb.net/forum/index.php?topic=1463.0

The TSB's retrofit for the future competition will throw up some interesting ways of tackling different sorts of homes (100 or so will be refurbished, looking for an 80% CO2 reduction), and there is a useful link here too (also off the aecb website link shown above): http://retrofitforthefuture.ni...e-study-in

If you look at the Passivhaus level refurbishment project of my solid walled Victorian refurbishment project on the simmondsmills.com website then you can download some infra red images of the house after the work, on a cold night, to really see the difference!

I am concerned that the UK will under-invest (c.£2k per house s not enough, as carbon savings are far too modest and significant reductions in fuel bills and increase in thermal comfort will not be achieved). Rather we should adopt the approach of designing a long term house refurb plan for each home before choosing which measures to take immediately - Europe's leading experts in buildings energy 'demand reduction' at the Passihaus Institut in Germany are currently developing a refubishment standard based on this idea . Otherwise short sighted spend on limited measures can mean better and neccessary measures later will become uneconomic e.g. why add only 100 mm of insulation to a wall when in 10 years time you really need to add more! In terms of UK pounds spent per tonne of carbon saved, reducing energy demand from homes is the best investment - a low ambition for both carbon and energy savings and for citizens thermal comfort and exenditure of fuel costs only scratches the surface of the problem: a higher level of investment is needed than being suggested by this campaign.

Also - generallly beware greenwash and unsubstantiated claims, at the end of the day, the environment and your wallet respond to real carbon reduction, solutions that really deliver in relaity rather than on paper. Lets be positive and sceptical!

I should add that the UK (as with Denmark) really need to undertake developing a national heat plan. Basically this is a review of all current and potential sources of waste and low carbon heat across the UK. Then and only then can cost effective (for uk citizens/tax payers) decisions be made relating to refurbishing UK buildings. Town is different to country, town different to city etc. Refurb measures needed are then defined at local level in relation to the heat plan. It seems that UK gov cannot do this sort of thing, rather we are 'educated' by the marketing departments of energy supply companies, materials and technology manufacturers, 'single interest groups' etc and national policy is defined by a mixture of commercial interests (direct lobbying, subsidised attendance at key working groups) and only a vestigial element of public interest. All of this leads to an expensive and usually pretty ineffective way of going about dealing with the challenges posed by climate change.

I agree with the previous comment and would contrast the so far ineffective UK approach with Denmark which has had local heat planning since 1979 and heats almost 65% of buildings with; e.g., waste heat from power stations and increasingly other renewable heat. See; e.g., http://www.solarthermalworld.org/node/766 and also for information the DBDH website. Most Danish heat distribution infrastructure has been laid since 1980.

This does make it possible to provide heat at much lower CO2 emissions to our many listed buildings and conservation areas that can't practicably be retrofitted to Passivhaus standards. Having to insulate walls internally is a major restriction; 300 mm insulation isn't an option. But lesser thicknesses plus low-carbon heat give a workable solution.

We need some better overall planning or we won't get to 80% less CO2 by 2050. People doing their bit isn't sufficient; government has to do its bit.

Sexy wall insulation? Why not? The end wall of our end-of-terrace early Edwardian house can't be insulated on the outside (abuts pavement and is in a conservation area), and inside can't accommodate battens+plasterboard (or books!) (narrow hall and staircase would demand radical building work). So I'm looking for a suitable insulating material to back some eye-candy (probably photos, which are easy to get enlarged and printed to a decent standard these days). Decorate while you insulate!

thin vacuum panel insulation? just don't put a nail through em....and check your bank balance first....

I too started looking at insulating the solid walls in my Victorian house while they are being treated for rising damp. I contacted the "official" body that is supposed to give impartial advice about energy saving, the Energy Saving Trust.

When I asked about insulating solid walls, they suggested two products (Sempatap and Warm-a-Wall) both of which are so thin and have such poor thermal resistance (R-value) that they make hardly any difference when applied to a solid brick wall. From a carbon-reduction point of view, they are pointless products. You're just sticking a thin layer of sponge to your wall and then plastering over it (a few knocks and bangs on the wall and it wil be full of little dents). In fact, if I was to apply these products to my whole house, I would actually be in breach of the Building Regulations which state that you have to aim for a U-value less than 0.3 if you are applying insulation to more than 25% of the internal wall area.

So much for the Energy Saving Trust. I also tried the National Insulation Association who told me they are a trade association and cannot advise on specific products. I tried my local Council and they also suggested Sempatap and seemed to be unable to decide whether it would contravene Building Regs which they themselves enforce?!

All in all, it's a confusing and difficult mess. In the end I just gave up and installed new radiators and a new boiler instead. They're more efficient than the existing ones and at least I can be sure that they will make the house warmer. If Britain is serious about making older houses more energy-efficient, there needs to be much more help for homeowners.

reply to richard homes firstly warmawall system 1 offers a 28% improvement on a solidwall, once skim finished offersadequate impact resistance, also to note building regs state. 0.3 the ideal, but if not possible the best standard, technically, economically feasble , warmawall fulfills this regulation, warmawall system 2 can exceed the building regulations whilst also offering a COMPLETE VAPOURBARRIER SYSTEM, UNLIKE INSULATION FOIL BACKED BOARDS, SEE WWW.WALLTRANSFORM.CO.UK

How about trying to convince the government to remove VAT from products used to insulate domestic property.

Even if you are in a conservation area (but not a listed building) it's worth checking as planning permission may not be needed for things like double glazing, unless there is an Article 4 Direction in force on the house specifically controlling windows. Someone may be calling your bluff.

Anyway, decent secondary glazing is cheaper, more efficient and may not need consent - unless it's a listed bulding. It also saves all the energy embedded in your windows if they are not beyond repair. Draught strip the old windows then add secondary glazing. See Scottish Office figures on the web if you don't believe me.