Has anyone installed outside insulation on their home? Do you need permission from the commune?
Related, inside or outside insulation? We are pulling our hair out with all the decisions that need to be made when we’re on a mega tight budget!
Hello,
Just about the inside/outside: if the house is brick and mortar or similar, for both the existing structure longevity and the micro-climate inside it is way better to put the insulation outside.
For the longevity - the fewer freezing/unfreezing cycles the better.
For micro-climate: thing how even excellently roof apartment compares to other floors in the hot summer - when you ventilate the house throughout the night the walls cool down and then slowly they heat up during the day. The roof apartment will get hot much sooner as there are no walls to absorb the heat.
Insulating from the inside is like having a roof apartment on every floor.
In principle, any local authority should support and perhaps even subsidize insulation. But I would certainly ask first.
Outside insulation in the form of styrofoam blocks is the cheapest and easiest. It works be beware it will stain after a few years of exposure to rain...
regarding the process:
A
1 first decide which option to make isolation is better to you
2. go to municipality and ask which permissions you need
B
1. you go first to municipality office and ask what certain interventions brings in term of paperwork
2. proceed according to this
or
combine A and B till you come to a valid option
C
hire someone to do this for you
general guidelines :
- it is easier and more cost effective, but not necessary cheaper, to do the isolation on the outside of the building
- if you are changing the properties of the building, you need permission. There are exceptions of course
- the rules varies,...
I strongly advice seeking professional advice, as wrongly executed isolation can bring more problems that it solves. The good thing is, Swiss builders normally refuse doing interventions that does not comply with the technical norms.
Thanks for this. I’d never thought about the aspect of being too warm.
@nejc you’re right about the steps, I just wanted to see if someone had a quicker option! We’re very time poor at the moment 🙄
yes, basically isolation is good, but one have take into account the humidity too.
The behaviour of water in the air is connected to the temperature, remember PV=nRT!
In general, there is a big differences between old, uninsulated buildings and new, comfortable one in the way how the humidity is regulated
- the old buildings are completely porous, so there is no big difference between outside and inside air, the building elements are drying most of the time naturally
- in the new one there is fairly big differences between inner and outside climate
the problem when isolation a building can come from:
1. we (must) prevent to much of air exchange (due to heat loses),
2. we must prevent warm bridges
3. we must prevent dew points inside construction, i.e. it has to be where the building components can dry up
How could I forget!
We have a 1979 build, no insulation yet, altitude 750m in a fairly regular mini earthquake zone.
What does this mean for insulation?
I am interested, but totally uneducated!
Best return on the money is to increase instead the insulation factor of the windows. They have the most heat loss. So, see about that first before considering the walls. If the build is 1979 then assume they leak like a sieve in which case replacement, refurbishing or adding storm windows may be a better worthwhile investment.
Then the second place to insulate is the ceiling of the top floor. In which case one has to increase or replace the insulation in the attic.
Well it depends on the ratio of window to wall space and relative insulation values etc.
Our house is older than yours, we made only new windows and it is already much better.
You have to order them as soon as possible because they arrive after 3 months.
If you want something fast and ecologic that you can make inside with your own hands, at least on the walls exposed to the cold, here you have a modern thing that my architect husband recommended to me for my holiday flat, abroad:
https://www.hornbach.ch/shop/Baumit-...5/artikel.html
It will take a bit from each room, as thick as you make it, as good it will be, after.
If you are a beginner, try to find on youtube how to make it.
Of course outside insulation is better but the price is not small.
We installed a stove to burn wood and the chimney was already there but it had to be higher and insulated. Only for this small thing that was made in a day the bill was 5k, more than ten years ago.
You need a building permit for any change in insulation as you need to submit an energy survey. At least that is the canton Ticino rules. I suppose it might vary by canton but I doubt it.
can you put on external insulation without increasing the exterior dimensions of your house?
I suggest making a plan of future renovation and than proceed, albeit partially but following some idea
- money spent on temporary solutions can be just spent on heating, the final sum is the same
- some interventions can make huge future damage, the most obvious is reducing the ability of building to dry without creating continuous
- damage on building usually takes some times, so you can afford first making windows and few years later facade.
- damage is not seen immediately, you will see it probably after few years or after a very wet summer (when the building will not dry up) you will get mould. After few years more it will affect some structural elements etc
- building inside insulation is problematic technically and it takes a lot of space, if you add 10 cm isolation on every wall of an usual room, you will shrink it from 12 m2 to 10.6 m2, almost the size of narrow single bed.
- modern isolations are easily 20m and more, if you go for low energy building
Finally, this is very theoretical discussion, almost pointless, you need to find a solution for your exact building, and your financial situation.
We needed permission for 2 reasons when we insulated our house from the outside.
1) the outer dimensions of the house are different (16cm thicker walls).
2) we replaced the old wood siding with Eternit cement fiber siding. This changed the material and the colour.
This resulted in a letter outlining our project plans and choice of colour for the Eternit going out to our neighbours to see if they object. Overall, it added 800chf to our project.
The company that did the renovation organized all the paperwork required for the permit.
Every canton and commune will be different.
We started everything a few years ago with a GEAK+ report, CECB in French I believe. They do a full analysis of your home's energy efficiency, followed by a step-by-step improvement plan. The report itself was around 6000chf, which was fully subsidized (first 4500, then 1500 if we chose to perform any of the steps from the report).
On their website you can find local consultants who can perform such a report, but find out about subsidies before committing to such a report, if you decide to go this route.
Very well put and easy to understand. Thank you.
Thank you thank you thank you!