88V8 wrote:
Which magazine recently did an insulation feature, the payback time on solid wall insulation for a whole house was comical unless one were Methuselah.
V8
In 2017 I was tasked with project managing a small pilot external wall insulation project on 10 semi detached properties. I don't recall exactly but it cost in the order of £25k per semi. The reason it was so expensive was that we determined at the outset that, being a pilot scheme, no corners should be cut. We had observed awful corner cutting on many of the completed schemes we'd visited.
That meant we had to remove everything attached to or abutting the property, so cutting back and adapting walls, fences, gates, demolishing lean-to's. Also trenching around the perimeters in order to extend the EWI half a metre below ground level, thereby necessitating adapting the below ground drainage bends and installing new soil stacks, removing and reinstating gas meters, reinstating disturbed paths and pavings, adding features to keep the Planners happy, the list goes on and on of all the enabling works and associated works that made it possible to properly install the EWI.
Many of the beneficiaries were leaseholders but because of the desire to do this pilot none of them were charged a penny piece. Before I left in 2021 we didn't go as far carrying out a folliw on project and I suspect if we had we would have had an uphill task convincing leaseholders, who would be charged, of the benefit of doing everything technically by the book.
The point for me is that when I see protesters causing mayhem in support of doing more insulation, without delay, I wonder to what extent they have a notion of the hurdles in that.