"External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) being added to a house in Malahide."
This Malahide home has a great location and the current owners are very happy with it. The only catch is that it was a very cold house.
The house is located in a mature development, with lots of similar homes. This means that the final finish needed to be close to the original finish.
The front wall had a brick finish which revealed a 100 mm cavity. This cavity was sucessfully filled using an NSAI approved cavity wall fill insulation.
The existing render was in fairly good shape, so there was no difficulty in attaching the fresh facade the existing building.
The first step is always to remove the window cills. The next step was to fit a starter rail and start with the first layer of insulation. It is important to get the starter rack level and in the correct place.
Once the starter track is in place it is quite quick to build-up the remainder of the wall in insulation.
The wall is covered with insulating panels. We carry a range of different insulants for different needs. These panels are attached to the wall both using a chemical bond (adhesive) and a mechanical bond (pins)
Once the insulating layer is on the wall the heat loss is dramatically reduce. Roughly speaking today's Irish building regulations give a 90% increase over the thermal performace of a house like this. This increase in thermal performance kicks in once the insulation is in place. 
Over the external insulation we add a layer of two (depending on which system we are using) of adhesive and mesh. The mesh and adhesive combine to give strength to the final layer.
The adhesive will give a smooth surface, strong in compression, smoothing out the points where insulations meet and where mechanical anchors pin the insulation.
The mesh gives tensile strength, especially were windows and doors cause stress risers along the plain of a wall.
For a house like this one, where we insulated just three of the 
four walls we added about 6 tonnes of material to the outside. This mass provides a very stable and smooth surface onto which the final render coat is added.
Traditional window cills are replaced with insulated versions. This eliminates a key thermal bridge that help conduct heat out of the house.
In this case the house was finished in an acrylic render along with white aluminium window cills. We offer several hundred different colours of waterproof acrylic finishes and can match most existing facades with no difficulties. These pressed aluminium cills were powder coated to get the exact colour that the householder choose.
The window cills are all made up especially here in Dublin to order. This gives us great flexibility to match what our customers choose. Also if householders want to change windows around or change the shape of the windows we can still fit the insulating layer on the facade with a minimum of fuss. 
In this particular home the downpipes also had to be changed and the householder choose these fetching black pipes to provide a contrast with the pale facade.
For the plinth we used an extruded Polystyrene (XPS) board. XPS boards are commonly used where standing water may be an issue.
We also rehung a metal side gate, three security lights, two taps and an alarm box. Since the new facade was 110 mm or 4 inches away from where it had been was a certain amount of ajustment required!
For this project two types of insulation were used: Cavity Fill and External Insulation. Since the greater part of the house was insulated with External Insulation the householder was entitled to the full 4000 euro HES Grant.
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..