Biggest Challenges

One of the biggest challenges people face when trying to insulate traditional, period or listed buildings is understanding the home insulation benefits. We can help through good advice and give you solutions.

Effective Insulation Methods

From our experiences at Heritage Lane, we have learn't that yet again nature is our friend! One of the most effective insulation methods for different types of period buildings involves the use of sheepswool. This natural material offers excellent thermal performance while always supporting the the vitally important movement of moisture. 

Today see's the obsession with products such as the man made Kingspan and Celotex boards (collectively known as PIR Insulation boards)  which have been created to maximise thermal innsulation whilst also being lightweight and very easily cut to size, but they are not without their downfalls, and two major downfalls straight away, which are incredibly important concerns to both the home itself and the occupants of that home:

Flammability concerns,  And Moisture passage concerns

flammability

Very sadly put yet very obvious: 

GrenfellTower 

Moisture passage

Too many people today still immediately think of rain when moisture is mentioned.

So we made this little video:

We've all heard of "thinking outside the box" now it's "time to start thinking "inside the the box"

Your home  is full of moisture even when it's not being occupied, very simply because it contains  the air that you breathe as soon as you walk in the front door. The air that we breathe is not pure oxygen, in fact it actually contains 0.05% of water vapour, so your home is, and needs to be, full of moisture even before you rock up and start creating huge amounts more.

Moisture  movement in older buildings is vital to ensure no damp, no mould, no fungal growths, and no harbouring of bacterias which all  have negative mpact's on the occupants of that building.

PIR boards are lined either side with impermeable aluminium foil, meaning any atmospheric moisture hitting these foil lined sides is just stopped where it can re-condense back into a liquid state, and then run into other surrounding areas including timbers, causing timber decay and rot to commence, which further encourages both wet and dry rot fungal growths to form, plus also encouraging Beetles to lay their eggs onto the decayin/rotting timbers which in turn creates "woodworm" issues that only help to speed up the collapse of the affected timbers - so thinking that  insulating between your roof rafters in the loft with PIR boards is a good idea, or underneath your lounge floorboards because there's a tiny bit of what we need to survive, causing a little draught between the floorboards is a good idea. Try having a dood idea instead:  very quickly stop! and start thinking of how are you  going to save your family, obviously pets included, if, heavens forbid, a fire was to  break out in your home!

SO WHAT'S THE ANSWER?

Picture this: it's a lovely Sunday in the winter so you head off to a lovely pub you know in a quaint village for their reknowned Sunday roasts? Y.ou take your coat off as you enter into the beautiful warm pub which has a log fire burning away.

You order the Roast Lamb, with mint sauce.

The very real, and very true facts are that nature provides Sheep wth coats to keep them warm in the winters and nature provides us with the abilities to remove them in the summers.

Sheep's Wool is the answer

In particular this sheeps wool insulation. This really is a very large and very important subject to cover, so it's far more simple to just direct you straight to the experts. They cover everything needed on their own website so rather than us trying to reinvent the wheel, we've just added their link below,you won't go wrong here: