wall insulation - insulmax anyone experience ?

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akoni

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#277147 29-Sep-2020 00:18

Hi,

just have 1960s brick house and planning to put wall insulation.

i found this insulmax.co.nz , anyone have experience this type of wall insulation?

apparently its wool type blown inside your wall.

hows the experience before and after putting insulmax in your house?

Thanks

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#2575639 29-Sep-2020 07:48

I have a 60s Stucco house, had this put in just after the end of lockdown (Chch). Definitely noticed a difference, the 'chill' was gone and the coldest room in the house was noticeably warmer.

Note that i have double roof insulation, double glazing and underfloor insulation, so everything else is already as good as it can be.

One thing to note, it took them nearly 3 months to come back and paint the holes they drilled. Sent me two invoices during that time both of which I refused to pay until the work had been completed

timmmay

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#2575641 29-Sep-2020 08:27

I had it done years ago on my old weatherboard house. It's not wool, it's polystyrene. Some thoughts:

Your wiring is now surrounded by insulation and heats up more. Hasn't caused a problem for us, but can
They inevitably miss areas as house walls aren't uniform, especially older houses
Their repairs to holes weren't great. They claim to fill and prime, but we had to redo it completely, sanding it smooth. With our very oily wood (painted cedar) we also found the holes leaked oil for 2-4 months so we couldn't do anything until it stopped. We could see the outline of the holes until we did a complete strip and paint with oil based sealer / primer.
They left the area around the house a bit of a mess (Wellington)

It helped the house temperate a little, nowhere near as much as ceiling insulation or adding to the ceiling insulation, and not as much as adding a ground sheet / insulation under the floor, but it helped.

My limited understanding is it's not a great idea to fill the cavity behind a wall with insulation, as that's where the water that gets in drains. This might cause moisture problems. Best ask someone who knows what they're talking about.

mdf

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#2575653 29-Sep-2020 09:01

See this thread and paging @Wheelbarrow01. I was really impressed with how it was described (though I've not used it myself).

Wheelbarrow01

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#2575713 29-Sep-2020 10:16

mdf:

See this thread and paging @Wheelbarrow01. I was really impressed with how it was described (though I've not used it myself).

Yes I have reviewed everything I said in that original thread on the topic and everything I stated back then still very much holds true. My heating bills have shrunk dramatically in the past 3 years - insulating my walls really did make that much of a difference in my house. Bear in mind that all houses are different so I am sure results may vary, but for me I can still say three years later that installing Insulmax has been a total success.

Zeon

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#2575737 29-Sep-2020 11:20

Is it a requirement that you get a building consent before insulating walls? My neighbour said they were requried to get a consent before replacing the lining and putting in insulation.

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thewabbit

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#2575753 29-Sep-2020 11:53

Zeon:

Is it a requirement that you get a building consent before insulating walls? My neighbour said they were requried to get a consent before replacing the lining and putting in insulation.

Part of the install was a building consent

akoni

14 posts

Geek

#2575997 29-Sep-2020 17:33

timmmay:

I had it done years ago on my old weatherboard house. It's not wool, it's polystyrene. Some thoughts:

Your wiring is now surrounded by insulation and heats up more. Hasn't caused a problem for us, but can
They inevitably miss areas as house walls aren't uniform, especially older houses
Their repairs to holes weren't great. They claim to fill and prime, but we had to redo it completely, sanding it smooth. With our very oily wood (painted cedar) we also found the holes leaked oil for 2-4 months so we couldn't do anything until it stopped. We could see the outline of the holes until we did a complete strip and paint with oil based sealer / primer.
They left the area around the house a bit of a mess (Wellington)
It helped the house temperate a little, nowhere near as much as ceiling insulation or adding to the ceiling insulation, and not as much as adding a ground sheet / insulation under the floor, but it helped.

My limited understanding is it's not a great idea to fill the cavity behind a wall with insulation, as that's where the water that gets in drains. This might cause moisture problems. Best ask someone who knows what they're talking about.

How much did it cost you on your house? I know each house is different but to give me an idea before i call them

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akoni

14 posts

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#2575998 29-Sep-2020 17:34

timmmay:

I had it done years ago on my old weatherboard house. It's not wool, it's polystyrene. Some thoughts:

Your wiring is now surrounded by insulation and heats up more. Hasn't caused a problem for us, but can
They inevitably miss areas as house walls aren't uniform, especially older houses
Their repairs to holes weren't great. They claim to fill and prime, but we had to redo it completely, sanding it smooth. With our very oily wood (painted cedar) we also found the holes leaked oil for 2-4 months so we couldn't do anything until it stopped. We could see the outline of the holes until we did a complete strip and paint with oil based sealer / primer.
They left the area around the house a bit of a mess (Wellington)
It helped the house temperate a little, nowhere near as much as ceiling insulation or adding to the ceiling insulation, and not as much as adding a ground sheet / insulation under the floor, but it helped.

My limited understanding is it's not a great idea to fill the cavity behind a wall with insulation, as that's where the water that gets in drains. This might cause moisture problems. Best ask someone who knows what they're talking about.

how much is their quote timmay ?

SomeoneSomewhere

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#2576004 29-Sep-2020 17:59

If it's polystyrene it can't be allowed to touch mains cable, except for the special purple cable. They will react and eat at each other. This is especially bad when it's in loose form as more will fall down the wall to replace the stuff that melts into the cable.

https://www.esfrs.org/black-museum/all-the-black-museum-cases/pvc-cable-insulation-and-polystyrene-insulation/

https://www.buildmagazine.org.nz/index.php/articles/show/electrical-cable-in-polystyrene-insulation

It might also be permissible if you deliberately oversized all the cable so it never exceeded 50C. Given that the cable was likely never sized to be surrounded by insulation in the first place, let alone remain that cool (normal design temp is 75C), the chances of this in an existing building are zero.

As such installing poly beads into an existing building without ensuring that it can't contact cables would likely break Regulation 17 (4):

A person commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a level 2 penalty if the person places thermal insulating material on or around fittings in an installation in such a way that the safety of the installation is compromised.

timmmay

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#2576013 29-Sep-2020 18:29

akoni:

how much is their quote timmay ?

I don't recall exactly, it was quite a few years ago. Maybe $4K at the time for a 140sqm house. I expect that'll have gone up now. They didn't have fancy tools back then like heat cameras either.

Wellingtondave

156 posts

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#2576122 29-Sep-2020 20:11

timmmay:

I had it done years ago on my old weatherboard house. It's not wool, it's polystyrene. Some thoughts:

Your wiring is now surrounded by insulation and heats up more. Hasn't caused a problem for us, but can

Your electrician should be consulted and may de-rate the cable runs as is appropriate, including changing breakers / fuses for a lower rating for that circuit if required.

Wheelbarrow01

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#2576257 30-Sep-2020 07:41

Wellingtondave:

timmmay:

I had it done years ago on my old weatherboard house. It's not wool, it's polystyrene. Some thoughts:

Your wiring is now surrounded by insulation and heats up more. Hasn't caused a problem for us, but can

Your electrician should be consulted and may de-rate the cable runs as is appropriate, including changing breakers / fuses for a lower rating for that circuit if required.

The proprietry product Insulmax uses is not polystyrene - it's blown mineral glass wool which does not react with TPS cable - see technical details and safety data sheet here.

timmmay

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#2576259 30-Sep-2020 07:47

Ok, may have changed then, because the stuff I got was polystyrene or very similar.

akoni

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#2576797 30-Sep-2020 20:58

after doing some googling, this is what insulmax is using knauf blown mineral wool

and how they install

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaksrgDCXVo

michaelmurfy

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#2581277 8-Oct-2020 12:22

So I just had a guy around to quote getting this done on my property (I also totally forgot he was coming around so didn't prep myself for this!) but he went around the property with an FLIR camera. The indicative quote figure I got means I can put almost 100% of this onto the ANZ Healthy Homes interest free loan.

I'll likely be going ahead with the install. The wool they use is made of glass and he states doesn't settle like actual wool does. The injection holes are also tiny. The amusing thing is they've actually used @wheelbarrow01's statement on their website: https://insulmax.co.nz/project/geekzone/

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