"External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) being added to a house in Ballyboden, Dublin 16."
This two story semi-detached home just inside the Dublin Motorway ring was upgraded by the family who have been living there for many years. To make the house more comfortable they upgraded the attic insulation, got a high performance gas boiler and of course insulated the external walls.
Scope of insulation work
A kitchen extension had been added with proper insulation so there was no need to do anything with those walls. The front wall has a brick finish, so we agreed to insulate that section internally.
Part of the side passage had been converted to an elongated store room, a very useful addition to the house, but current building regulations regard it as an unheated space and so it falls outside of the notional thermal envelope which needs to be insulated.
To use external insulation along the original wall of the house would narrow this covered passage way and remove very valuable storage space so it made more sense to insulate this section from the inside.
Then we could insulate the remainder of the house from the outside.
Mixed Wall Insulation Measure
In effect we used two of the three possible ways to insulate walls: cavity, dry lining and external. Each of which is supported by the SEAI HES scheme. But there are widely different grants available.
The rules of this grant scheme also cover what they call “Mixed Measure Wall Insulation Solutions” 
I.E. where the optimisation of a home requires a combination of insulation methods, such as this house in Ballyboden. In these cases the method that addresses the majority wall area is the only eligible grant measure.
Where the measure applied for is not the majority solution, SEAI will only pay, regardless of
what approval an applicant has, for the measure type which was what was used to
complete the majority of the job.
SEAI Inspections
Please note that SEAI reserve the right to inspect houses during the project or after the work is completed to check that the work is performed to the relevant standards. We know becauseour contented customers have had inspectors squinting at their walls! If the inspectors are not happy with the work they have the right to impose sanctions on the contractor and the householder.
In this way both the householder and the contractor need to be extra careful to fully understand the rules of this scheme and abide by them.
Click here to return to examples of external insulation projects in the Dublin Area.
If you would like to learn more about External Wall Insulation please contact us now to learn how your home can benefit.