Monday 11 October 2010

My cavity wall insulation is still debatable

Really how blimmin' hard is it to work out if you've got cavity wall insulation?

Having avoided it for years for fear of having to tidy all the rooms in the house - not realising of course that they're insulated from the outside - I only started to look into it last week as part of my ASAP pledge. And although I'd rather be doing far more exciting things like the washing up, I'm on a mission to get this thing sorted.  After all, according to the Energy Saving Trust around 30% of heating can be be lost through the walls of an uninsulated home, so it's well worth the effort!

But before I decided to bother a company that specialises in such matters I thought I'd call our housebuilder to enquire whether they'd installed cavity wall insulation when they built the house seven years ago. Of course, I might have remembered myself if I hadn't been too busy at the time counting the number of halogen ceiling lights we wanted to have fitted in the new build.

"I don't know." said the man at the end of the phone when I called the Taylor Wimpey office.

"Can you find out?" I replied.

"Yes, we'll ring you back." came the uninterested reply.

That was two weeks ago and I haven't heard anything since. I rang again last week, spoke to someone else and got the same reply.  How can it have taken so long for a housebuilder to find the answer? Surely even a computer could say Yes or No. They must have known at the time, whether through policy or building regulations.

I feel like I've hit a brick wall.

However, this is only a small brick wall compared to some that others have faced recently.  While I'm busy debating whether I've got cavity wall insulation, a friend of mine who pitched a sustainable programme idea to a national broadcaster found herself being told by a defiant commissioning editor that "Climate change is debatable".

Now that's some brick wall indeed.   As a non-expert on these matters, I simply hope that those who say it is debatable actually use it to open a debate rather than close it.

But for now I'm looking at the smaller picture at home and knowing that cavity wall insulation save us fuel usage and money, well that has to be a winning strategy all round.   And after avoiding it for months, I'm now more determined than ever to get it sorted, even if it comes to drilling a hole in the wall.

Now where did I put that drill....

6 comments:

  1. It's very possible that you already have suitable insulation. Was your house built in 2002 or 2003? If it was 2003 then new building regs meant they had to super insulate it, pre 2002 - not so much! Also google the model of your house someone else out there may have the same issue.
    I'd love to get ours done, but it was built in the early 1930's so along with the crappy drains, no cavity to fill!

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  2. Climate Change debatable? Debatable in the media perhaps, but among climate experts 97% agree that climate change is happening and we contribute to it. Ooo, such comments make my blood boil. I'm guessing yours too. Who the hell is this commissioner and where are they getting their information from? Backing away from the keyboard. Well almost. I offer this wonderful resource up as ammunition for such madness http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm

    Skeptical Science (Getting Skeptical about Global Warming Skepticism) also has an iphone app, so if you get caught in such a situation you can tap into the site and they address all these skeptic/denier arguments. Okay, now I'm backing away.

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  3. Hi Liz - that what I would have thought. They have now come back and said it would be insulated with either cavity wall insulation or with a void (lol, isn't that a cavity?). Next step up to the loft to check... ;0)

    Hi ghg - mine's been boiling fast and furious too since I heard that. There we are with someone with the power to give a chance for sustainable projects to be broadcast, not political at all, but she's turned it back into a political argument defying the evidence out there. Thanks for the link that will prove useful.

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  4. Helo Mrs (not so) Average

    I got round to following you at last, I've been meaning to for a whilwe now!

    You are what I call a Zeroaire.
    http://beyondmaterialism-john.blogspot.com/2010/10/who-wants-to-be-zeroaire-i-do.html

    Best wishes

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  5. Hi John. Thanks for dropping in. A Zeroaire eh. Now that sounds intriguing, will pop over to have a look ;0)

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