Insulating Victorian floors with wool

[AMCLS1]

I’m going to insulate the voids between the ground floor and 1st floor of our house with sheeps wool laid onto either a breathable membrane or a wire net.

Has anyone experience of doing this with a Victorian property? Or would you like to throw your advice in?

I’m aware that our house is a double skin stone property with a void and as such has lime mortar and some old lime plaster so needs to be maintain it’s breatheability (not a word) hence the wool.

I’m also going to overboard all the floors with ply because as lovely as the old boards are we are having it rewired and replumbed as it was built in 1860 and it’s been knocked about a bit and not very well.

I also intend to very painstakingly cover all the pipes with new lagging to avoid as much heat loss as possibly as well as have a number of the sash windows replaced and rebated to add draft strips (they have been double glazed but not that well - we’ll be checking to see if they are working as DG windows should too)

Anyway back to the main point - insulating floors with wool, what’s your experience?

Couple of pics added.

P.s. old lathe and plaster hallway ceiling has been carefully taken down to be re boarded.

 

[Mr Chibs]

Hello,

I filled my floors with rock wool from memory 175mm (joist depth).

I stapled barrier fencing mesh to the underside of the joists, then sat the rock wool into this, I then covered the insulation/joist tops with building paper (brown paper sandwich, with bitumen in the middle) before I put my floorboards down.

I did the whole ground floor this way.

Foam PIR may be easier but double the cost (possibly more now). You could use PIR for your house, it can be used on Victorian properties.
Mine is about 1900.

Good luck

 

[Tigercubrider]

Why?
insulating the ground floor ceiling/ first floor …..floor means that the bedrooms won’t get the heat from the ground floor.
I am not saying don’t do it but I don’t see any massive savings over hassle and cost.

 

[AMCLS1]

Why?
insulating the ground floor ceiling/ first floor …..floor means that the bedrooms won’t get the heat from the ground floor.
I am not saying don’t do it but I don’t see any massive savings over hassle and cost.

You make a fair point. I hadn’t really thought of it as starving heat from the bedrooms.

I would say we should definitely look at the existing loft insulation, I’m probably going to double board those ceilings anyway as one of those is cracked anyway.

We do have a larger cellar that we could insulate the ceiling of, that way we’d get my expected benefit.

 

[HERTS P&D]

I removed all my downstairs ceilings and fitted insulataion then double boarded and plastered.

The result was the house was much warmer and there was no noise from downstairs to upstairs. The bedrooms all have trv's on and are normally much cooler than downstairs anyway.

Win win in my books.

Andy