Badly fitted insulation between joists and thermal imaging 

Please send over some photos would be nice to have a look. Yes, its better but very costly. I think we will be moving away from PIR insulation soon I will be showing a completely different way of doing things in an up and coming video using mostly much cheaper insulation and a quicker method of installing also more air open!

@@SteveRoofer I will do Steve. Thanks. I have subscribed to you for some time and you have certainly made me re think on the installations of insulation products. You are a credit to RU-vid.

@@SteveRoofer looking forward to this Steve, informative as usual.

Yeh I would much prefer to use the tape but it's just way to expensive at the minute.

@@SteveRoofer Please do it soon - I am about to embark on a similar project.😀👍

Thanks unfortunately now I'm not on-site that much I'm not getting the opportunity to film what I need however going out and doing loads of roof surveys is enlightening as the misunderstanding in all aspects of the building trade is just astonishing. Love the job you are on now it's looking good. Yes if there is an opportunity I'm up for it.

Hey Robin, nice to read you in the comments. You are the one who tipped me to buy a Festool Insulation jigsaw (ISC 240)🙂

Glad it was helpful!

Glad it helped

Glad it was helpful!

Its a hard job to get perfect cuts on thicker boards unless you have the perfect tools Bear in mind this type of work in a lot of building projects is given to unskilled workers who don't understand or aren't shown how skillful work it is to try and get it right.

Very welcome

Glad you enjoyed it

Your absolutely right in aspects of your reply. My point in the video is we can do better and should do better.

In reference to the thermal camera, are you saying "please clearly define the colors in reference to how much of a change in temperature the areas are"? In other words, the visual "distance" between blue color on the camera and red is 0.5 degrees Celsius vs the "distance" between blue and red is 15 degrees Celsius?

Thanks

Glad you liked it

Although I can agree with some of your comments above I'm not quite sure about your comment on insulated plasterboard! By the time you've installed the plasterboard even if it's backed by insulation you are deemed to be internal and therefore you should have no problems.

@@SteveRoofer what about services coming through the wall ? Cables, pipes etc have to them penetrate the VCL for every socket switch pipe etc. every screw to install the plasterboard penetrates the VCL behind it. Here in Scotland we’re still 150 centres for fixing. That’s the equivalent of 19 penetrations from the face of the plasterboard into the substructure that we’re trying to prevent cold bridging from. The best way as we know to get rid of vapour is ventilation. There’s no ventilation next to either on the inside or outside face of a VCL that’s hard up against another surface. The other “issue” with insulated plasterboard is that it doesn’t prevent cold bridging from the substructure unless you’re able to seal all but joints between each sheet. And if you’ve got for instance a 72mm insulated sheet that’s probably worse than a steel penetration because it’s 72mm deep gap only stopped via the plaster or jointing compound. Where as if 25mm+ of PIR is installed over the studs then battened out again all joints taped on the insulation to create your insulated envelope you know you’re now not relying on any other measure of sealant. Any penetrations in the future of the building will not affect the VCL performance. What about radiators also. On an insulated plasterboard wall with a foil layer directly behind the plasterboard it won’t reflect heat but absorb it as there is no airspace to reflect that heat into. Heating up the mechanical fixings also. Helping heat penetrated the insulation more. It’s all little silly things but lots of little things can make that difference I believe. The least penetrations we can put in our walls where the VCL is involved, the better. No hundreds of staples. No hundreds of drywall screws, no multiple cables pipes or electrical boxes but into our insulation. Air circulation where you want it. Any moisture that may get behind a battened out wall over insulation has an air flow between the back of the plasterboard and the face of the foil. It’s also got somewhere to go. Directly down in the case of a malfunction. No need to seal plasterboard to floors etc. if anything you can raise it up 5 or so mm to help vent behind the board. It’s sure not detrimental to your sealed air. It seems a common practice though for big house builders to teach their workforce to air test after walls have been plastered. If we can air test at insulation level, we then know our insulation ins doing exactly what it is meant to be doing. Just my opinion though.

Making a service void is alway the best option

@@SteveRoofer standard with us. Some councils won’t allow insulated PB when planning for extensions. I believe there’s an issue with fire ratings also.

Great suggestion!

I think we will be moving away from PIR insulation soon I will be showing a completely different way of doing things in an up and coming video using mostly much cheaper insulation and a quicker method of installing also more air open!

@@SteveRoofer Intrigued to find out what pir can be replaced with!

Multi layer foil perhaps?

I preheated the room with a fan heater for about an hour before taking a thermal imaging. I'm going to do some more testing with the insulated tape and see how that differs using the thermal imaging speak soon

Its on its way in about three weeks

Pir is just not the answer in older buildings in most scenarios as there is too much scope for poor detailing as insulation like pir wasn't designed into the building . Its great in a modern sips design.

Unfortunately not everybody thinks like that and a lot of jobs are just not finished off correctly

No problem!

Glad you think so!

Yes I watched that looks like a nice job he is doing a he has also commented below

Im going to do anther video and I will try that also i will compare the foam tape. thanks for the idea

Yeh whenever I foam in boards & I cut them with at least 5mm gap to get the foam in & use screws etc to hold the boards in place until the foam sets as fitting the boards tight sounds good but I always found you end up with some smalls gaps which you then struggle to fill because they are to small to foam properly.

@@SteveRoofer if putting that foam tape around every square of celotex is the only option it’s gonna make work so expensive we’ll be better of getting it sprayed. Side note- I done a loft and garage conversion recently, foil taped the loft conversion, it cost me about £600 in labour/wages. Stapled a vapour barrier on garage conversion, cost about £80.

Yes its getting out of hand

Polyisocyurate PIR insulation is a cyanide based killer.all 70, Grenville tower folks died of cyanide poisoning in the fire fueled by this material. Tape the exposed edges and cover the lot with a vapour barrier to reduce heat loss but the inhabitants will be protected from the long-term exposure and lung damage this material will cause . Construction workers please use PP3 masks

I'm a lover of rock wall as it is fair open problem is it doesn't have the same you value as PIR insulation, but personally I would use Rockwall all day long if I could get to the correct U Valley so go for it

Yes form a void in front of the and rinsulationun all services in that

Yes, it's unfortunate all this detail takes a lot of time, but when you are trying to something like reducing the amount of lost energy from the building, then you have to be more precise, but for some unknown reason they can't seem to work this out

Thanks for liking

Yes thats the way to do it

Hello, What do you layer with?

@@ajaykumarsinghlondon 50mm PIR boards

Yes the point of the video is to show that we can and should be doing better, i'm a lover of molty foil because of its ease of fitting, however I still see it fitted badly lights cut thoug it. Edges not taped and sweating problems.

@@SteveRoofer Unfortunately Steve, you are in the minority when it comes to good practice on building sites. There is little care given to installations for example, how many electricians actually understand that they are doing wrong when they cut through the vapour barrier or insulation? You shouldn't have to teach every trade what they should and shouldn't do in each instance but understanding the very basics and principles of general building should be on the radar of every trades person There are too many 'General Builders' who are single tradesmen and know little about the various aspects of building .

I have the use of meny thermal imaging cameras as my son is a level 2 Certified Infrared Thermographer some of the cameras I use are 15K plus the one I alway use is one you fit to an iphone costing about £300!

@@SteveRoofer Thank you

Yes multifile is probably definitely the way to go

I think something is going to have to change as at the moment there only seems to be one very small company making this tape

Can you post an example of the expansion joint foam…. I’m upgrading the insulation in my Dorma cottage… so far have just put insulated PB (72mm) over the top of existing PB (which has about 70mm of rock wool before the felt) I figured that because of the gaps PIR wouldn’t gain me enough to compensate for the mess of removing the rock wool and plasterboard… I am however going round with my thermal camera installing rock wool where there is none… However for the Apex I thought some PIR might help. Hence maybe using the quarter price gapotape….

Can you easily find wide expansion joint foam tape?

Yes that's an option

Yes, everything you do correctly is definitely going to be better however as you know you are putting up another one over the inside so the choice is yours

@@SteveRoofer Yeah, the second inner insulation skin creates a full envelope. Thanks.

Would it not be better to just reinforce PIR in the process of pouring it, and use that to build with? Kind of like, concrete?

Well, if it's done incorrectly, you could be right, but what we try to teach here is how to do it correctly

Even if you did that today, it's not recognises the correct thing to do. You're supposed to use this new tape that goes around the edges and expands it's called Gapo tape and he is very expensive

No sack get someone how can cut proppley

Yes, some of the new products are really good

Thats a good idea ill get on to that

You do it with forethought, you will get there in the end

Yes that's one way of looking at it

@@SteveRoofer great video, well done.

email me info

@@SteveRoofer what's your email?

Floors are totally different and dont need venting

sounds interesting get back to me if you need any help

Try sending over some photographs by email

Great point!

Agree, used it on insulating a loft knee wall area, makes fitting clean and tight. Good but pricey.

I don't like any of the solid insulations like kingspan ( Pir,s) because of the chemicals and gassing off so spray foam is a No NO in my book just not worth the risk

I have to finish doing all this rubbish with PIR first then I will show you where i'm going

@@SteveRoofer look forward to it 👍

Firstly you can't use a damp proof membrane. All plastic vapour barriers are coloured green so you should be using a green plastic vapour barrier. If you insulates over the vapour barrier the vapour barrier will be warm and if it's warm you just won't get any condensation there this is why warmers are so good.

"thats why Warmers are good" ? Warm roof ??

Yes, that's why you should always put insulated plasterboard under a ceiling or internally on a stud wall

Yes, you should have an air gap on the outside and you should have the vapour barrier on the inside. You also should be following your design plans.

@@SteveRoofer the design said 100mm timber dormer cheeks but builder used 150mm. So it was a question of if the 150mm between timbers is enough or if should still overboard with more insulation to avoid cold bridging from the timbers

Well, yes, theoretically you should still put some insulation over the inside joists to stop thermal bridging, but if you've got no air then on the outside that is a problem in itself@@LaurieR100

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I love your videos, I’m checking it out with my thermal camera I think Im giving the builder sleepless nights!

You will have to give me more details than that as I don't quite understand your buildup

@@SteveRoofer is it ok to have the vapour barrier between two sheets of insulation

Yes if u have 3\ 4 of the insulation above

Because the AVCL will not be complete it will have gaps where you cant join it

In a construction of any kind, that should only be one vapour barrier, and that vapour barrier should be on the warm side of any insulation adding other vapour barriers can only just confuse the construction adding insulation that has foil on it in my view is not the correct thing to do, however seems to be the way the manufacturers and all building control except but it stands to reason you have one vapour barrier and everything else past that bath barrier must be of a lesser quality

Yes thats exactly my thoughts its like everybody using GRP is all salesmanship PIR is not good

@@SteveRoofer I Hate pir for lots of reasons. Caused so many issues. Also wonder what the effects will be on our health installing it too.

Helps reduce the rising humidity in the rooms below into the roof void

Yes I totally agree I'm trying to move away from all of this once I finish this side of demonstrating things I'm gonna start stripping back this demo rig and insulating organically definitely my preferred option

Yes it does however the better we start the better the end result

I agree t a point

Basically some up the situation very well and trained and skilled people it's always gonna end in tears

Im going to do that

Yes that is the way you are supposed to do it

I don't think we will. I don't think it actually burns it sort of smoulders away but it's certainly not a very good material and it's very non-user-friendly and I think it's really bad for the environment

yeah, I don't think I pay anything like that

Yes thats what im going to demonstrate when I have finished with this rubbish PIR

Good to hear!

@@SteveRoofer please do it soon.😀👍

The problem with spray phone is that the building industry doesn't trust it. We seem to be taking out more than we are putting in

Thanks