Improving our building fabric, one step at a time, firstly understanding our external cavity walls construction

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If you’ve ever lived in an old, draughty home, you’ll know the struggle, cold rooms, high heating bills, and that feeling that no matter how much you turn up the thermostat, the warmth just disappears. That was exactly our challenge with this 1930s house. But rather than just adding more heating, we took a different approach… one that focuses on making the building itself perform better.

Welcome to our whole house retrofit journey! These images, will take you through the first steps we took to transform our home, starting with our external walls. Using a ‘Fabric First’ approach, we focused on improving insulation and airtightness before thinking about heating systems or renewables. The goal? A more comfortable, energy-efficient home that costs less to run and is better for the planet.

We’ll show you how we stripped back the external walls, repaired essential elements and got everything ready for a high-performance insulation system. You’ll see the challenges we faced, the decisions we made and the changes we didn’t expect!

Our process was to first:

Remove the existing pebbledash render
Assess the existing construction makeup
Clarify the junction between each fabric element
Make alterations, replacements, and essential repairs
Prepare the external surface for the installation of external wall insulation

We prepared the walls ready for External Wall Insulation & a Light-weight Render system

Skim coat layer of sand & cement render applied to improve airtightness.
Created a flat & even surface for the final insulation system.
Walls now ready for external wall insulation and a lightweight render system.

Stick with us as we take you through our step-by-step process. Whether you’re planning a retrofit yourself or just curious about how old homes can be made warmer and more efficient, we hope these images give you plenty of insight and inspiration!