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After a few years of suffering the draughts, submitting claims for grants and getting refused by every company, contacting the local council and complaining to my M.P. I decided to do the job myself.
My home was built in 1927 and has suspended floors, I tried everywhere to get help in insulating the underneath of the ground floor but three weeks ago I gave up all hope and did a bit of research on the web and went it alone. I hope my experience might help others in a similar situation.
I measured all of the downstairs floor-space and invested in a material called jablite, it is a polystyrene insulator which is fire retardant. I also bought 12 cans of gap filler.
I accessed the underneath of the house via a small hole under the stairs, this was not very easy but I got through a gap of 12"x 10". I had a headlamp on so I could make my way around beneath the floor, measuring the spaces between the joists. I wrote down all of these measurements and an hour later emerged from the grim hole and started cutting. It took me three days to fit the insulation and then I went around any spaces and gaps with the filler.
Today I got the best proof that it had done the job, my son arrived home after work and we sat chatting about the cold day, he said how nice it was to come home to a warm house. The heating had gone off at 8.30am, this was 4pm and it was still 25c inside, last week it was more like 14c inside during the same cold outside. I reckon that the initial outlay of £150 shall be saved in heating costs in one winter. So if you have the same sort of home and want to save money then I advise that you try the same, it is not dead easy but it is not rocket science either and if I can do it anybody can.
My home was built in 1927 and has suspended floors, I tried everywhere to get help in insulating the underneath of the ground floor but three weeks ago I gave up all hope and did a bit of research on the web and went it alone. I hope my experience might help others in a similar situation.
I measured all of the downstairs floor-space and invested in a material called jablite, it is a polystyrene insulator which is fire retardant. I also bought 12 cans of gap filler.
I accessed the underneath of the house via a small hole under the stairs, this was not very easy but I got through a gap of 12"x 10". I had a headlamp on so I could make my way around beneath the floor, measuring the spaces between the joists. I wrote down all of these measurements and an hour later emerged from the grim hole and started cutting. It took me three days to fit the insulation and then I went around any spaces and gaps with the filler.
Today I got the best proof that it had done the job, my son arrived home after work and we sat chatting about the cold day, he said how nice it was to come home to a warm house. The heating had gone off at 8.30am, this was 4pm and it was still 25c inside, last week it was more like 14c inside during the same cold outside. I reckon that the initial outlay of £150 shall be saved in heating costs in one winter. So if you have the same sort of home and want to save money then I advise that you try the same, it is not dead easy but it is not rocket science either and if I can do it anybody can.
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