On 24 Oct 2004 17:06:32 -0700, (Dean
Heighington) wrote:

Can anyone recommend a place to buy
Celotex or Kingspan at the best prices,
or is there a cheaper solution that would
do the job just as well?

It's for my garden lodge... timber framed,
sitting on brick built wall to about 500mm,
all on a concrete, reinforced base and with
tanking system to prevent any damp entering
the sub-floor. Area is about 14m x 4.5m.

The building is well away from the house (right
at the bottom of the garden) and the space will be
split into 2 areas... home/office with computers and
creature comforts and the other area, a workshop.

The roof is pitched with gable ends and covered
with a good quality felt. The interior ceiling is
vaulted with exposed beams, as I like the sense
of space this gives.

So, I'm looking to insulate the walls and roof elevations
and could do with some advice on the best product or
combination of products to use to get maximum
performance, while remaining economically priced.

I'd also be grateful for any adivce on heating solutions.

Thanks for any info.

dean.

I just posted some information on how I did all of this for somebody
asking about heating for an outbuilding. Use Google Groups and
search backa few days.

I used insulated pipework buried in PVC duct run from a heat exchanger
from the house system for the heating.

There's no reason not to use this principle if the pipes are large
enough diameter to deal with the resistance but If you are talking
about a large distance from the house, then it may be better to have
gas run to the building and have a separate boiler.

When using Celotex in the environment you describe, you do need to
have a ventilation space behind it. The vapour barrier comes with
the foil and you tape the joints on the inside surface.
The advantage of this material is that you get very good performance
in terms of low U value for a given thickness.
If you buy a reasonable quantity, you should be able to negotiate a
builder's merchant down to around £15 a sheet for 50mm.

If the walls are clad on the outside onto framing then you can create
the space behind with wooden spacers and push the material into place.
then tape the joints, cover with plasterboard or ply and you are done.
For a workshop, ply is a better bet because you can fix things
anywhere.

For the roof, you don't say how deep the rafters are. If you want
to keep the exposed beams then the ventilation gap of say 25mm behind
the (say) 50mm Celotex plus something to cover the Celotex may not
leave much left. You could always deepen the rafters by attaching
more timber (within reason) under the existing stuff.

You can get seconds of Celotex if you are not bothered about the odd
ding, and another alternative is Rockwool insulation but its
insulating properties are a lot worse the Celotex.
Given the size of building I would use the Celotex as the running cost
savings will soon outweigh the material costs.


..andy

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