Are you looking for ways to make your home thermal efficient? We bet you have come across this term, external wall insulation quite often! Whether you heard it from your office colleague or your neighbor, exterior wall insulation is a great way to protect your house from the outside by insulating the walls.
But as usual, it has got many advantages and a single but troublesome disadvantage. This article will answer almost all your queries regarding whether you should go for external wall insulation or not.
Generally, there are two types of insulation, internal wall insulation, and external wall insulation. While the former applies to the interior walls of your house, the latter applies to the exterior walls of your home’s main walls.
But our main concern is the external wall insulation. Read on to know further about the topic.
9 Reasons To Install External Wall Insulation
Here are nine reasons that will help you decide, why you should be installing external wall insulation.
It helps to keep the house better insulated and warm.
The most significant function of the external wall insulation is to keep your house protected from the cold temperatures outside. It maintains the warm temperature of your home. It also helps to save heat loss and cuts down the energy bills.
The walls of your house may lack a cavity!
Your house walls may be lacking a cavity, and you will want to use external insulation for insulating your solid walls. For insulating solid walls, external wall insulation is the best way to insulate your home.
The cavity walls can be insulated in the cavity, but the solid walls lack cavity, and there is no choice but to install insulation on them.
It also saves you your floor space, unlike the internal insulation.
It helps you save space and use it for your purpose. If you go for the internal insulation then, a lot of space will be occupied by the insulation layers and you will lose the floor surface.
External wall insulation helps you by taking up the outer space. It does not occupy the inner space, and as a result, you have a lot of free space for yourself.
You can arrange your best rugs and carpets on your floor without worrying about the floor space!
It will help cut down the painting cost too!
So you installed the external insulation, you know what? Now, you will not have to worry about the cost of painting your house time and again. As most of the area will be covered by the insulation itself. So you save on your painting cost too!
Now you can save that money for other chores!
Minimize cold bridging
For minimizing the cold bridges, it is one of the best ways. Cold bridging occurs when the cold from the outside through your walls permeates to the inside of your house. This type of insulation helps to minimize cold bridging. What it does is provide a coat that acts as a barrier between the outer cold temperature and the internal temperature of the home.
So it prevents any cold from entering the house and helps keep the home warm and insulated.
Your home will look new again!
It also helps to add design to your house. With just some sheets and layers on the outside of your house, you will save a lot on the decor of your house. The elevation of your house will get modernized. The design of your house will be updated, and you can hope to get compliments from your neighbors too! It will add design as well as cut down the yearly painting cost off your budget.
What a great way to add to your savings!
It helps to increase the thermal efficiency of the home
It will help you use the thermal mass of your main external walls to your advantage. The external insulation will act as a coat and prevent the cold from outside from entering your house. As a result, the warmth of the home is maintained. Adding insulation to exterior walls will help you maintain a warm temperature in the house.
So it is a wise way to help the house maintain a warm temperature with the help of the pre-existing walls.
It helps to increase the life of the wall
As the wall is now protected with insulation, it naturally lengthens its life. The insulation protects it from external factors like rainfall and storms. It acts as a barrier and helps the exterior walls live for a long time.
It cuts down the energy emissions!
As the heat is now trapped inside the house because of the insulation, the energy emissions will be significantly reduced. Now, the usage of energy to heat the households goes down as one uses external wall insulation. This has also helped to cut down the energy bills as well as a significant reduction in Carbon dioxide is also recorded.
These reasons justify why it will be beneficial for you to use this insulation.
3 Drawbacks Of Installing An External Wall Insulation
We have had a look at the advantages of the external wall insulation. Now, let us look at the probable drawbacks of this kind of insulation system.
It is expensive
It is! The wall insulation, even though it is effective, and provides a good amount of protection, is expensive! So if you do not have a big budget and are not interested in spending an amount on the insulation of your walls, you may want to back out.
We know that this process will be costly, but from what we have researched, people are very happy with the investment they made. The decision is yours!
There are two kinds of walls, the first one allows moisture to pass through, but it evaporates after passing through the wall. The second one does not allow the moisture to pass through at all. It completely blocks the moisture. We can assign the former as a stone wall and the latter as a solid wall.
This kind of insulation, if not installed correctly, will result in dampness. So if you want to install this kind of insulation, make sure to get it installed from the best dealers and professionals who have expertise in the field.
External wall insulation may not be very effective around the windows and doors
External wall insulation is thick, and it envelopes the exterior walls of the house just like your coat that covers your body up perfectly.
As it is thick, it becomes tough to properly shape it around the corners and bend it around the windows and doors. As a result, there may be many voids left that may result in the improper insulation of the house.
The main goal of the external wall insulation is to keep the house warm. This improper installation shall result in cooler temperatures in the house, as a result.
Wrapping Up
While we agree that the external wall insulation can be heavy on your pockets, it is worth the money. It will provide you with walls better suitable for high temperatures and adds a touch of design to your house.
We believe that we have discussed almost all the advantages and disadvantages of external wall insulation. If the decision has to be made by comparing the advantages and the disadvantages, then clearly the advantages outnumber the disadvantages.
The cost that you will be paying will ensure that you get long-term benefits after you install this product.
But, the decision is dependent completely on the amount you want to spend, so make the decision accordingly!
