Apparently under a government initiative, Redditch council have teamed up with e-on to provide exterior insulation to various houses free of charge. Given they’ve been posting things through our door as well, I called them up the other day to see whether this was on offer to privately owned houses as well as the council houses – and it is !! It was made clear that not all private houses will be offered it, but because there are council owned houses in the Close, it would look silly having 2 houses upgraded and the others left alone.
It seems they put insulation boards on the outside of the house, then cover over it with render and paint it, so your house grows in its width and depth slightly. They are in the process of doing 5 test homes at the moment and I took a look at them today and was pleasantly surprised. The issues for me to check were the colour, the finish and the windows.
They have done all the rendering and its like a magnolia/creamy yellow colour and the render itself, whilst “stipply”, is solid, unlike our current house finish which is basically bits of gravel pebble dashed all over the house. The house was painted around 18 years ago shortly after I moved in (thanks Mom and Dad!) and so with touch ups over the years, its well past the time for a refresh now anyway, so replacing the entire fascia with a non pebble finish and getting a complete repaint is wonderful news. I haven’t seen the window solution yet though as they haven’t fully finished and still have the scaffolding up, but with an inch or so of insulation and render it leaves little or no window sill. I’ve been told that they have a solution to this problem. Obviously the windows themselves will be much more recessed than they would normally be but I assume they are extending the sills somehow. We are apparently booked in for April time, so very very happy about the news.
http://redditch.whub.org.uk/cms/communications/news/2011/september/hundreds-of-homes-winyates.aspx