Insulating under your floor-boards.
Another way of reducing draughty floors is to insulate underneath the floorboards on the ground floor. As well as making the room feel warmer, it will save you £40-£50 a year. Caution: Don't block under-floor airbricks in your outside walls. Floorboards will rot without adequate ventilation.
Solid Wall Insulation.
Approximately a third of homes are of solid wall construction, i.e. don't have cavity walls If you have solid walls you could install external or internal wall insulation. Solid walls lose heat more quickly than cavity walls, but because they are solid there is no easy way to insulate them. A solution to this is external and internal wall insulation. External wall insulation This involves adding a decorative weather-proof insulating treatment to the outside of your wall.
The thickness of the insulation needs to be between 50 and 100mm and is usually installed where there are severe heating problems or the exterior of the building requires some form of other repair work, providing the opportunity of adding insulation.
This is more expensive than cavity wall insulation but it could save you £290 - £350 a year on you energy bills. The marginal* cost for external wall insulation starts at £1,800 for a semi-detached house. *The marginal cost includes the insulation and labour costs when wall repairs are being undertaken.
Internal wall insulation
Solid walls can also be insulated by applying internal wall insulation. You can use ready-made insulation/plaster board laminates or wooden battens in-filled with insulation or flexible linings. Insulation/plaster board laminates usually consist of plasterboard backed with insulating material typically to a total thickness of up to 90mm. Installing them involves the boards being fitted directly to the inside of the wall and the thicker the board the better the insulation.
You can also attach wooden battens in-filled with insulation to a wall. This involves attaching battens to the wall, filling the spaces between the battens with insulation and then covering them with a plasterboard finish.
Costs for internal wall insulation start from £40 per square metre, and you could save between £270 - £340 a year on your energy bill.
Please note
Both methods can be disruptive to the existing building and costs can be high. Flexible insulating linings (a form of dry lining) can also be used. These are cheaper and less disruptive to install, though savings on your energy bill are lower, typically £90-£100 a year.
