With the ever increasing cost of living, it is good to know that replacing your aging boiler with a Combi could make a real difference to your fuel bill for years to come. Once installed, a Combination or Combi boiler could save you up to 40%* on your annual energy bill. Its high energy efficiency rate will provide hot water as and when you need it, making it cheap to run and kinder to the planet.

Other advantages of choosing a Combi boiler include convenience because they provide instant central heating and hot water, which saves you valuable time. Unlike some other boilers, they are easy to install, and will not take up much space because there is no need for a separate hot water storage tank. What’s more, a Combi boiler will reduce your carbon footprint, because its energy efficiency level reduces carbon emissions, so you can play your part in saving the environment.

A Combi Boiler Means You:

• SAVE Money On Your Energy Bills
• SAVE Installation Space and Time
• INSTANT Hot Water And Heating
• SAVE The Environment
• CHEAP To Run
• EASY To Install

There are many brands of Combi boiler available, and all are designed to reduce the amount of energy required, and therefore save you money on your fuel bill. Major brands such as, Baxi, Vaillant, Worcester Bosch and Potterton are available from trusted energy providers such as British Gas or EON.

Installation

All Combi Boilers must be installed by a CORGI registered engineer as this will guarantee you peace of mind that it is properly set up to the manufacturer’s recommendation. British Gas is a trusted name for new combi boiler installation, and use only CORGI engineers to service their customers.

* Source – Energy Savings Trust.

Safety is paramount where gas is concerned, and with the threat of Carbon Monoxide poisoning within homes, it has become a legal requirement that any gas installation, maintenance or repair work be carried out by a CORGI registered engineer.

Carbon Monoxide kills, and typically seeps into your home via your boiler, gas heater or cooker. It is impossible to see or smell making it hard to detect, therefore taking risks with who you enlist to maintain and repair such appliances will compromise your safety.

A CORGI registered engineer will bring you peace of mind, as CORGI is the UK’s authority on gas safety. A CORGI badge is a guarantee of quality, and its engineers provide nothing less than an expert, quality, and safe service.

CORGI Is The UK’s Authority On Gas Safety

With over 30 year’s experience, CORGI was founded to protect households from unsafe gas installations. Therefore enlisting a CORGI registered engineer will ensure that any repair, maintenance or advice delivered is safe, competent, and of the highest standard.

The CORGI Standard Means:

• Safety
• Quality
• Expertise

Be Certain Your Engineer Is CORGI Registered

To keep safe, it is recommended that you ensure any engineer you call out to fix your broken boiler or central heating is fully CORGI qualified. As it’s now illegal for anyone other than a CORGI registered professional to install, fix or maintain any gas appliance, you must either check their credentials beforehand, or use a highly reputable energy provider such as British Gas who employ only CORGI engineers to service their customers with boiler repair and general gas maintenance.

CORGI will help you find a local engineer. With over 55,000 CORGI registered gas installation businesses in the UK, it should not be too difficult to find a CORGI installer local to you. All CORGI engineers carry an ID Card, and customers should always ask to see it prior to any work taking place. To check if the ID Card is valid, customers can use the CORGI website check an installer service.

Home insulation is an important part of your house and a properly as well as adequately insulated house is essential not only to save energy cost and meeting energy standards but also the occupants in the house can live comfortably. With that being said even though home insulation is important, not every part of the house requires insulation. To find out which area or part of your home requires insulation, read on. The following paragraphs describe a couple of do-it-yourself (diy) steps in which you can take to easily determine the area or parts of your house that requires adequate insulation.

Basically, the following areas of your house are the area or parts of your house that requires home insulation. You can refer to the diagram below to determine where to insulate.

1 Ceilings below an unheated area.
2 “Knee” walls of a finished attic level room.
3 Floor of a crawl attic.
4 The sloping portion of the roof in a finished attic. Leave a airspace between insulation and roof.
5 Exterior walls.
6 Floor above cold crawl spaces. Floors above a porch or an unheated garage.
7 Walls of a heated basement.

Click to enlarge

In addition to the need for insulation of the building shell (exterior walls, ceilings, and floors), all hot-water pipes and heating as well as cooling ducts that pass through unheated portions of the house (such as crawl space, garage, or unfinished attic) must be insulated. Most houses usually have no more than 1 or 2 inches of insulation wrapped around ducts in unheated areas. Because of increasing fuel costs, this is considered minimal for most areas, and additional insulation can usually be justified. Check the condition of the insulation. Are there any loose, torn, or missing sections? Also, if there are any exposed duct joints, check them to see if they are sealed tightly. When the ducts are used exclusively for air conditioning or serve a dual function (such as heating and air conditioning), the outside of the insulation should be covered with a vapor barrier to prevent condensation. A vapor barrier, however, is not needed on ducts used only for heating. If there is a vapor barrier on the ducts, check its condition. Look for torn and missing section. All vapor-barrier joints must be tightly sealed.

If the domestic hot water is produced in a tank-type water heater located in an unheated area, the tank should be covered with an insulation jacket. These jackets can be purchased in most building-supply or hardware stores. Although tank-type water heaters are normally insulated by the manufacturer, by installing an outer insulation jacket, you will further reduce heat loss and thereby minimize the energy needed to maintain the desired water temperature. The temperature of the hot water should not exceed 140ºF. Temperatures in excess of 140ºF are not only wasteful of energy but will also shorten the life of the water heater.

Simply put, all the exterior walls, floors and ceiling that have contacts with unheated areas such as attic, garage, crawl space and basement requires insulation. Other than the structure of your house that requires insulation, the water pipes, air conditioning ducts as well as water heater requires proper insulation as well to reduce heat loss.

Vapor barrier is an important aspect of insulation. However, a lot of people don’t know what vapor barrier is, let alone its application. Here is a short paragraph that describes what vapor barrier is, and also its purpose associated with insulation. The frequently ask questions such as how to apply or use vapor barriers, where to apply vapor barrier, how to install vapor barrier and what is crawl space vapor barrier will be answered.

While you are checking the amount of insulation, another thing that you should be checking is whether there is vapor barrier associated with the insulation. A vapor barrier is a thin sheet material such as polyethylene film, aluminum foil, or an asphalt-impregnated kraft paper through which water vapor cannot readily pass.

Many insulation materials are produced with a vapor barrier applied on one side. If the insulation does not have a vapor barrier, a separate one can be installed. The purpose of a vapor barrier is to prevent moisture problem in exterior walls and ceilings, and floors that face unheated areas, due to condensation of water vapor (normal in a house) that passes through those surfaces. To be effective, the vapor barrier must be facing the heated room rather than the cool, unheated area.

The following is a diagram that describes what the above paragraphs say.

Home insulation is an important part of your house and a properly as well as adequately insulated house is essential not only to save energy cost and meeting energy standards but also the occupants in the house can live comfortably. The following paragraphs describe a couple of do-it-yourself (diy) steps in which you can take to easily find out if some parts of your house has adequate insulation or no insulation at all.

First of all, the following areas of your house should be checked to see if there is insulation being installed or applied.

• Ceilings below an unheated area.
• “Knee” walls of a finished attic level room.
• Floor of a crawl attic.
• The sloping portion of the roof in a finished attic. Leave a airspace between insulation and roof.
• Exterior walls.
• Floor above cold crawl spaces. Floors above a porch or an unheated garage.
• Walls of a heated basement.

In determining whether your house is adequately insulated, you should check the exterior walls and the ceilings and floors that face unheated areas, such as the attic and crawl space. In unfinished areas where the insulation is exposed (often in the floor of an attic or ceiling of a crawl space), the thickness can easily be measured. If the attic floor is covered, you can pry up one board and look for insulation. Determining the amount of insulation in a finished exterior wall is more difficult. However, you can make a quick determination whether the wall is inadequately insulated or has no insulation by feeling the inside surface during the heating season. If the wall feels cold to the touch, insulation is needed.

Sometimes you can determine the amount of insulation by removing the cover to a light switch and peering into the wall space, using a flashlight. Caution should be observed, since the switch is electrically hot. Because of the small amount of open space between the wall and switch box, this method is usually not effective. Also, it is possible that the electrician who installed the wiring might have pulled the insulation away from the switch and outlet boxes to facilitate installation. In this case, you might think that there is no insulation in the wall. The only way to determine positively how much insulation there is in a finished exterior wall is tot make a small hole in the wall (in a non-obvious location such as a closet) and measure it. The hole can then be patched.

In short, these are the DIY steps where you can take to easily determine adequate insulation or no insulated has been applied at all.

One measure of the effectiveness of insulation is its resistance to heat flow, the R-value. The higher the R-value, the greater the resistance to winter heat loss or summer heat gain. The following table shows typical R-value for various types and thickness of insulation.

R-numbers are additive. You can add an insulation rated R-11 to one that is rated R-19 to achieve a resistance value of R-30. The thermal resistance of an area covered with loose-fill or flexible insulation can change over the years. The insulation R value depends not only on the material but also on the amount of trapped air contained within the material. If the loose fill is disturbed or the flexible insulation crushed (because of items being stored on top of it), it will no longer be as thick as when it was installed. Consequently, its effective R-value will be reduced. To determine the current R-value of the insulation in your home, you should measure its thickness.

The insulation R-value recommended for your house can be determined from the map below. You might be surprised to learn how much insulation is recommended. The R-values, however, are based on current and projected fuel costs. If your house is already insulated, once you determine the amount of existing insulation, you can add the difference. Remember, the R-number are additive. In some homes, it might not be economically justifiable to increase the insulation to the recommended value.

The attic is one of the most important areas in the house and therefore it should be adequately insulated to minimize heat loss. The insulation needed in the attic will of course depend on the geographic location of the structure. In both crawl and unfinished full attics, the insulation should be located in the floor (between the floor joists) and not between the roof rafters. Otherwise, heat from the rooms below will escape into the attic.

Some of the important attic insulation tips are insulation should be installed with a vapor barrier facing the heated portion of the structure and not the unfinished attic area. A vapor barrier is an aluminum foil, a plastic sheet or an asphalt-impregnated paper that prevents moisture movement from the heated portion of the house into the unfinished attic area. If the vapor barrier is incorrectly positioned (facing up into the unheated, unfinished attic), condensation problems can develop during cool weather. Moisture rising from the heated areas below condenses upon contacting the cool vapor barrier. Depending on the amount of vapor, the resulting condensation buildup can reduce the effectiveness of the insulation and cause peeling and flaking of the painted ceilings and walls in the rooms below.

If there are heating or air-conditioning ducts in the attic, check to see whether they are insulated. Metal ducts often have insulation in the inside, so tap the duct with your flashlight. If you hear a hollow sound, there is no insulation. If there is a dull thud, insulation is present. The more insulation on a duct, the less the heat loss during the winter and, in air-conditioning ducts, the less the heat gain during summer. Generally, a minimum of 3 inches of insulation wrapped around the outside of the duct will substitute for missing insulation. If the duct is used for air-conditioning, the insulation should be covered with a vapor barrier to prevent condensation from forming.

Additional attic insulation tips are especially for houses in the northern section of the country, when there is a furnace in the attic, insulation between the roof rafters as well as in the attic floor is recommended. To ensure proper ventilation and avoid condensation problems between the rafters, it is important to leave a ventilated air space between the top of the insulation and the underside of the roof deck. The insulation and the associated air space will help keep the roof deck cool. If the insulation is not between the rafters, heat from the furnace will warm the roof deck and melt the bottom layer of snow that has accumulated on the roof. This often results in an ice dam.

Others attic insulation tips that you might want to consider are adding more or additional attic insulation to bring the total insulation up to current energy standards. The attic insulation added should not have a vapor barrier if the existing insulation has one. All too often the homeowners adds insulation with a vapor barrier, which can then cause condensation problems. Look at the insulation in the floor. If there are two layers of insulation and both have vapor barriers, the upper barrier should be slit with a razor blade to allow moisture movement.

Moreover, if there is a full attic with partition walls forming rooms, the attic insulation should be located on the unfinished sides of the partition walls and on the ceilings of the rooms. Occasionally, attic insulation is placed between the roof rafters ad not between the floor joists and the partition walls. This installation is inefficient because the heat will escape into unfinished areas.

In conclusion, here are some quick recap of attic insulation tips. Remember vapor barrier should face the heated portion of the structure and not the unfinished attic area. If there are heating or air-conditioning ducts in the attic, check to see whether these ducts are insulated. Check if additional or more attic insulation is needed. Basically here are several questions that you should be asking yourself when you are purchasing a house or consider attic insulation, is the attic insulated, is additional insulation needed, does existing insulation contain a vapor barrier and is insulation properly installed.

What is home insulation? That’s a good question to be asking if you are new to insulation. Insulation is available in a variety of forms and materials. The three most common forms are flexible insulation, loose-fill insulation, and rigid insulation. Flexible insulation is manufactured in two types, batts and blankets. Both are made of fibrous materials such as glass fibers, rock wool, wood fibers, or cotton. Organic fibers are treated chemically to make them resistant to fire and decay. Batts are precut in 4- or 8-foot lengths and are available in thicknesses between 2 and 6 inches. Blankets are furnished in continuous rolls and are available in thickness between 1½ and 3 inches. Both batts and blankets are manufactured in 15- and 23-inch widths so that they can be readily used in homes that have been constructed with joist and stud spacing of 16 or 24 inches.

Loose-fill insulation is generally made from rock wool, glass fibers, vermiculite, pearlite, cellulose, granulated cork, shredded redwood bark, sawdust or wood shavings. It is normally supplied in bags or bales and can be poured, blown, or placed by hand. Loose-fill insulation is suited for use in the sidewalls of homes that were not insulated during construction or between the floor joists of unheated attics. However, if there is no floor covering, it is not recommended for use between the floor joists when an attic fan could blow the loose material around.

Rigid insulation is generally made from extruded polystyrene, polystyrene bead board, urethane, fiberglass, or wood fiberboard. It is often used to insulate masonry walls and comes in widths of 24 and 48 inches. Most rigid insulation boards are not fire resistant and should be covered with at least ½-inch gypsum wallboard to ensure fire safety. Rigid insulation boards are also used as backer boards for aluminum and vinyl exterior siding.

Another type of insulation that was popular in the late 1970s was foamed-in-place insulation. It was made from urea formaldehyde. In many homes, the foam ingredients were improperly mixed and installed. This resulted in excessive formaldehyde vapor being released into the house, causing adverse health effects. Urea formaldehyde foam insulation (UFFI) is no longer being installed; however, many homes have UFFI in their walls. Therefore, if your house is built in the 70s, you should take note of this.

Attic is probably the most important area of your house and yet it is the least inspected place. It is not uncommon for a homeowner to say that he or she has lived in his or her house for over twenty years and has never gone into the attic. Inspecting an attic can reveal problems of which most homeowners are not aware, some of which might be potentially dangerous or costly to repair. Incidentally, if the homeowner does say that he or she had never gone to the attic, you can be sure that at the very least, the attic is inadequately insulated by current energy standards.

There are basically two types of attic: full and crawl. A full attic is one in which a person can easily walk around. Usually there is a floor in this type of attic, although the walls and ceilings are unfinished. There might be partition walls forming finished rooms with sloping or horizontal ceilings. Access to a full attic is usually through a finished staircase.

In a crawl attic, which is completely unfinished, the roof is sufficiently close to the floor so that to get around it is necessary to crawl or stoop over. The crawl attic usually does not have a floor. The ceiling joists from the level below are exposed. When getting around in this type of attic, be careful to walk only on the exposed joists. If you accidentally step between the joists, you will probably frighten the pants off of anyone in the room below because your foot will go right through the ceiling. Access to a crawl attic is usually through a ceiling hatch located in a closet or hallway or through hidden folding or sliding steps.

Insulation and roof leakage are probably the only things most people consider when thinking about the attic. However, there are other items of importance and concern, such as ventilation and its associated problems, fire hazards, electrical and plumbing violations, improperly discharging vents, and open duct joists.

In conclusion, before installing any insulation at your attic, be sure to find out which attic does yours belong to, crawl or full. Also find out if there is any roof leakage, ventilation issue, fire hazards, electrical and plumbing problems before doing any insulation work. That will save you some re-installing cost.

Due to the overwhelming response to the post, “how much does insulation cost“, I decided to write another post that is going to address the question of “how to estimate home insulation cost”. This post is going to be somewhat similar to “how much does insulation cost” article, so I am going to be brief here. Before I go deeper into the cost estimation, I want to stress that you can use this formula or method to estimate the insulation cost no matter where you live.

The question of how to estimate home insulation cost actually depends largely on if you were doing the home insulation work all by yourself or if you were going to hire some contractors to do it. Whether you are do-it-yourself or hire a contractor, the formula to estimate the home insulation cost is going to be the same and real simple. The only difference is just on the labor part. If a contractor is going to do the dirty work for you, then all you have to do is include the labor cost plus the material cost. If you decided to go adventurous, then the only cost you incur is the insulation material cost.

To estimate the insulation material cost, all you need to do is figure out what the R-value is in the first place. Of course before doing that, you need to know which area in your house that you like to install the insulation as different areas require different R-value. Other than that, you also need to know which insulation material you want to use for the specific area. Different material carries different cost. So after choosing the insulation material and figuring out the R-value, the next thing to do is measure the size of the area that you want to insulate. You need to know the size as the number determines the amount of insulation material that you are going to use.

Other than figuring out the size of the area, knowing the thickness of the insulation material is equally important as most insulation material comes in a standard thickness. You might need to stack the insulation on top of each other to achieve the desire R-value. For example, popular insulation materials such as fiberglass and cellulose batts or rolls have R-value of 3 and 3.3 per inch respectively. Therefore, to achieve an R-value of 18, you would need about 6 inches thick of fiberglass or 5.5 inches thick of cellulose. With that being said, if your fiberglass batts is 3 inches thick, then you need to stack two batts to achieve a R-value of 18.

Once you have figure out the size and also the amount of insulation material, you can call the local home depot to ask about the cost of a square feet of insulation material. By then, you will know what the total home insulation cost is. To save yourself from doing the work, you can hire a contractor to do it for you. Then you will have to add that extra labor cost into your budget.

To get a quote for hiring a contractor to do the insulation work for you, following the link here:

Get a quote from a local contractor

Hope this help!