Floors, walls & ceilings

Depending on the age and style of your home, its floors may be a bit like a colander – full of holes. Up to the mid-1950s, ground floors were mostly constructed with wooden boards across timber joists with a big, drafty cavity beneath.

Drafts always mean greater home running costs.

Depending on the age and style of your home, its floors may be a bit like a colander – full of holes. Up to the mid-1950s, ground floors were mostly constructed with wooden boards across timber joists with a big, drafty cavity beneath.

Drafts always mean greater home running costs.

Some ‘up market’ older homes have tongued and grooved floors that are not so drafty. But more often than not floors are simply boards with gaps that have gradually widened as the years passed by.

One solution is to lift the boards and install a layer of mineral wool insulation on a netting support. Alternatively there are special filler materials that can be used to plug the gaps, in colours which match the timber.

Every home’s walls are like heat stores that help retain warmth. If you live in a house built after the 1930s your walls will have cavities between the inner and outer masonry leaves. They can give rise to potential heat loss.

You can make your home much cosier by filling the cavity with insulation that is blown in through small holes drilled in the exterior brickwork leaf. This is only carried out by specialists.

If you don’t have cavity walls you can insulate the exterior or have dry linings inside, which will reduce the size of the interior space by a few centimeters.

If there is no problem with water ingress from a roof or leaking plumbing, ceiling cracks can be easily repaired and painted or papered over. But to make a ceiling warmer you can install energy efficient insulation boards or create a false ceiling and insert glass fibre or loose fill!