Cavity Wall Insulation

As part of this year's big push to insulate the house properly, we were having the small area of cavity walls insulated today. They extend only to the 'modern' extensions (by modern, read 1970's), which are the hall, cloakroom, and downstairs loo; the garage and workshop (not, in fact, built at the same time); and the kitchen expansion (ex hallway) and utility room. These are all dressed stone outer leaf, with a cement block internal leaf, and a variable cavity. An excellent team arrived at lunch time, and the pair of them have spent a few hours blowing about eight cubic metres of polystyrene 'Polypearl Platinum' beads, bound with PVA, into the cavity. Theoretically, that should reduce heat loss through these walls by about three quarters, which should be noticeable.

While they were doing this, we put down another section of the new garage floor (SFUF, QuinnTherm, and ply, as before), and packed out our stud wall with more solid insulation, before screwing a plasterboard on top. We'll plaster it tomorrow.

Stud wall without, and with plasterboard (© Ian 2014)

Having grown rather tired of the untidy state of the herb garden, we've decided to cover it in weed suppressant, which will keep it neat, and start killing off the grass, before we get round to digging it over. It now looks much neater, especially where I was able to quickly strim down the grass first. We also laid a strip up the middle of the apple walk, which very nearly met the cardboard mulch to either side.

We've now emptied a large number of small plants out of the greenhouse, and they've gone out on the membrane, to start getting used to life in the great outdoors. More will follow tomorrow, as we've lots of things to pot on, to make more space in the greenhouse for the tender veg.