cavity wall insulation will be the next ppi

[ljwales]

The old lady that lived in my house had it fitted through some, dodgy, government scheme. She'd been in the house 50 years with no damp and it appeared a few years after she had it installed. Now I've got the house and constantly have to run a dehumidifier to prevent damp. The company that installed it refuse to take it out. Will cost a few k for a private company to do it.

Aibu to keep chasing them on this? Its got a 25 year guarantee.

I have this .

We did this thinking it was a good idea to reduce heating bills, no problems with condensation or damp priir to the installation.

Since then, the bathroom window is constantly soaking and there is damp in one of our bedrooms. I listened to a 5live show about this very problem, getting them back is nigh on impossible .

You need ventillation in a house. We had an issue with damp and condensation in the loft - we had everything, cavity wall, double glazing, foam in the loft.

Someone fitted soffits or whatever in the loft - basically it allowed the air to escape and created a flow of air. A house can be too warm and you get issues like this.

Like this:

www.manthorpe.co.uk/Building/Products/Roof-Ventilation/Condensation-in-the-Roofspace.html

We had guys at the door a few months as go offering to do ours free as part of some government scheme. DH said no because our house isn't that cold anyway and he didn't want the walls messed with unnecessarily. I was glad he had turned them away when my friend a few doors down told me what a state they had left her house in, they managed to drill right through to the inside of the wall after they'd said they wouldn't leaving dust and mess everywhere and the workmen were really rude to her when she confronted them about it.

I often have friends ask if they should get it done (I work in construction) and I generally advise caution. As a type of insulation it's the one I hear the most problems about.
When you insulate a house you also must think about ventilation. Otherwise think about what happens when you deal a plant in a plastic bag..... We generate an awful lot of water vapour - breathing, our plants, washing, cooking etc and if we completely seal our house up we trap that inside. Causing damp.
Also if done incorrectly, cavity wall insulation can track water in from the outside by not properly draining the cavity - the cavity is there to prevent damp that gets through the external wall(rain screen) from getting inside. You can fill the cavity but you must be careful how you do it and what with.
Getting it removed is a devil of a job so that's why it costs £££ and why the original companies will do as much as possible to get out of doing it. If you seriously want it removed and they refuse to come back and sort out problems under guarantee - your best bet may be to get an independent surveyors report & then take the original company to the small claims court for the costs of fixing the problems.

We've had this.
For 16 years we managed to keep anything in the loft and it stayed dry (but a bit cobwebby).
Had loft insulation last year, free government scheme, everything up there is now damp. It hasn't made a jot of difference to our heating bills.

DishwasherDogs - check that they haven't blocked up your air vents with the new insulation. I spent an hour last weekend contorting myself into the far reaches of the loft removing insulation from the vents in the corners. You could feel the air flow come back straight away. We had to chuck some stuff in our loft away after we had the same problem. Luckily we don't keep that much up there.

that's weird, we have far less damp now than before we had the insulation put in.

We have the lot - cavity wall/loft insulation, triple glazing, AND ventilation - especially in the roof space above the loft insulation.

Our heating bills are minimal. £5 a week in the winter (boiler is our only gas appliance) in a 3 bed detached house.

Ventilation is key.

Ragged - you obviously have sufficient ventilation in your house that it works as it should. Which is great.

SomewhereI - it's great when it's thought about and put together correctly which yours obviously is but my problem is that there are too many cavalier contractors cowboys in the retrofit CW insulation market. Poorly done it can cause more problems than it solves. It's not the only answer and it's not always appropriate.

No problem with ventilation when they did our CW - they drilled a bloody great big hole in the living room wall and stuck a grill on it, leaving a howling gale blowing through every time it was windy. Managed to avoid them doing the same in the kitchen as the surveyor hadn't clocked that we had a gas hob (no gas in this village) so the contractors didn't fit a vent.

We haven't had a problem with damp since ours was done. We do have venting in the loft which was already there and there are vents on the double glazed windows, so maybe that it the key thing.

I think sorting out the humidity would be a better idea than reversing the insulation.

Get a humidity meter like this one, so you can monitor the problem:-

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009IBM564/ref=pe_385721_37038051_TE_3p_dp_1

I have a well-insulated flat, and find excess humidity is only occasionally a problem, usually after a weekend when air-drying lots of laundry. I have a dehumidifier that helps keep it down. I also had one of the bathroom extractor fans replaced with one that runs at a low setting 24x7, in addition to ramping up when the light is on, but for various reasons particular to my installation I don't think that's helping. Usually I would say such continuous ventilation is a good idea. (I've calculated it only costs something like £10 a year electricity to run the fan.)

Various things you can do to get humidity down:-

1. Open windows occasionally for a short period
2. Continuous ventilation, either holes to outside or extractor fan.
3. Use condenser dryer instead of hanging laundry to dry
4. Use a dehumidifier.

Sorry, see you have dehumidifier. Also if it's damp in the walls rather than mould from interior humidity, the problem may be something else.

If the problem is interior humidity, I should add that I mostly didn't have a problem until after DD was born, when we switched from using washer-dryer to air-drying. It was only with hindsight after getting mould near the windows for a couple of winters that I realised the cause.

The thing is I have to open my windows to stop it, thus defeating the point of it!

The same company that installed it tried a door to door sell of CWI and I took out a lot on the clueless teenager as I've been fighting the company that did it for over a year to get it removed.

We have Cavity Wall insulation - absolutely no problem with damp or humidity. But it is still quite a draughty house.

We have condensation in main bedroom. I think its the new DG windows.
The RH meter does show like 90% in there. It builds up overnight when heating is off. 2 mouth breathing snorers.
I think its the gap round the windows, and would like to plaster up to the window. There are no vents on them.
We use a tumble dryer and have started opening window in kitchen when cooking (its gas).
Our bathroom fan doesnt seem to make any difference.
Its an oldish house and the windows are ridiculously large so must lose a lot of heat.