Its interesting, as you say this loose type of fiberglass is in itself not water resistant and will hold water and therefore would be useless as insulation. We have a 1970 block of flats that have this insulation in the 50mm cavity, our last external block removal found a 50mm hole had been drilled and the core dropped into the cavity to bridge it. !!!!! We suspect that the cavities were filled after the building was completed but its not easy to spot the drill holes. As we have scaffold asses at the moment I am tempted to drill 12mm holes into the bed courses at the top of the walls to allow air movement to dry out the insulation and then maybe at the bottom as well. We have an average of 20% moisture readings to the outside skin so we can re-check at the end of the Summer to see if it has fallen. youtube.com/@riversideestate-jj2hr?si=oYhk0vFU77KVnJwv

Thank you for taking time to reply to me, I really appreciated it. Many thanks. All the best 👍

I use to hate pointing now I love it away from some of those little idiot bricklayers

Next time speak up 👍

Quality

Hi, I have to do very similar job, but need to install air Bricks instead old imperial. I couldn’t find any information on the web as to how to install air bricks into solid brick wall of an old house. I am planing to install additional two air brick at the front of the bay wall due to damp issues. One is already there placed in the middle. It is a solid brick wall house was built back in 1900. My question, due to structural integrity reasons do I need to install lintel when installing air brick. Wall is pretty thick, more than 200 mm. Would appreciate any advice really. Many thanks.

Good video.

I would personally suck it all out and leave the cavity empty so it can breathe as it was designed to do. I did this to my house it was a big job but all the damp problems have now gone completely.

👍🏾

Aren't you biased because you only see the cases where it goes wrong?

How would i prevent this? Would this be expected with such a type of wall layering?

nicely done! I can no longer use a hammer drill b/c of problems with my right arm, so I'm taking another approach. thanks for the vid, though.

Good explanation.... well done ... Thank you

Excellent video. What do you do when rebuilding a good portion of a bricked outer wall, but they no longer make that color brick?

Bc of your videos we settled with eps and impregnated wall, were going for whitewool before, think this is the better decision.

Have been renovating a property in Northern England near the coast for some time now. We found significant damp issues and damage (e.g rotted joist ends) due to soaking white wool cavity wall insulation. We removed it entirely and left the cavity clear - using vacuum cleaner and drain rods, and installed modern cavity closers instead of the existing brick turn backs which mean all the window reveals were damp. We also removed all the external roughcast render which was keeping the damp inside the cavity, as it could not dry out through the roughcast. After a few months the damp has completely dried out. Remember the CWI does not cause the damp it just acts as a conduit for other problems. In our case there were many external wall vents which essentially meant that whenever there was wind driven rain it came through the vents and topped up the CWI like a big wet blanket. Therefore were replaced the old vents with better ones and placed cowls over these new vents - so our cavity ventilates but without the damp. With the render removed we see the external bricks soaking up the rain, but dries out after a short time - eventually plan to use a more breathable render than the old roughcast. Quite a big job, but i definitely would not install CWI - in future our prefered alternative is to use wood fibre insulation to give thermal mass and breathability for internal wall insulation.

I worked in the cavity wall and loft industry for 26 years, installing and surveying from 1984 to 2010. I've worked for the large companies, the family ones and the one man bands. There were always people that cut corners to earn a better wage and management and supervisors that weren't bothered what went in the walls as long as the jobs wete done. The problems that are encountered now come down to the suitability of the property, the survey and the quality of the install. Most of the time when you undertook the survey you drilled 1 hole in each elevation to look in the cavity for areas of rubble. Most of the "surveyors" (a man with a drill, boroscope and a clipboard) would drill 1-2 foot under the windows to look for rubble in the cavity, you wouldn't find much doing it there. You needed to drill close to the DPC where there was a tall column of brickwork above, you would have a better chance of finding rubble there. It would very rarely be removed though as the customers would have to pay extra. Rubble creates a cold spot as the insulation will fill around it, warm air striking a cold surface creates condensation which creates mold and damp issues. Older properties were generally worse but I once took out 2 ton of rubble from a 1960/70s semi-detached house, the bottom of the cavity was full to a depth of 300-500mm with mortar. I must have removed 150 bricks to clean it out. Then there's the exposure zone. Houses in exposed areas generally had poor pointing, I think the maximum allowed was 5mm raked joints, flush or bucket handle pointing was ok. Wind driven rain was the problem in the exposed areas, I've turned a few jobs down because of exposure. Stone wool was the better of the 2 available products, it went in much denser than Fibreglass. These 2 were the market leaders as in the 70s, there was foam insulation scandal which decimated the industry after That's Life got hold of the story of the cowboys doing a bad job and the chemicals causing breathing difficulties Beads came along quite late, they were awful, too much prep and messing to set it up. Both Stone wool and Fibreglass required a test box to be filled on each job to ensure that it was the correct density, too light and it could allow moisture to track across it or slump, too dense and it could also allow moisture to track across it. Installers just didn't do them correctly, if at all. The faster the fibre went in the wall, the quicker the job was done, the lighter it was the quicker it was. Less fibre meant you were on to the next job and an earlier finish. Polystyrene beads were the new product when I was in my later years, they were bound with PVA glue but the set up was slow. The bead was weighed in a bag over a specific time and the glue was a certain amount over a specific time, you had to do this on every job as atmospheric pressure was a factor. There were less holes to drill but inevitably corners were cut as the ratios would be altered to achieve a faster flow rate of bead, see above, (faster, quicker, home!) Gas appliance checks, underfloor air bricks, cavity brushes all took time and slowed downthe job. Changing underfloor vents could be very time consuming, 10 on a job could add an hour to the time, 3 jobs per day could add a few hours. Most of the time you were in teams of 2, one drilled, filled the machine, fitted the cavity brushes, did the vents and swept up while the other filled the cavity and pointed up as they went. It was hard work every day to earn an average wage. 3 semi detached houses per day was the norm, each van would fetch in about £1000 per day. Some lads used to turn the pump off when pumping the material in the holes to speed the job up, especially if the windows were new as they wouldn't be removed for years and the customer wouldn't see that the cavity was partially filled. Some of them used to sing this song just before they turned the pump off. "One, two, miss a few, three, four, miss some more, ninety-nine, a hundred". Council properties didn't pay well so you had to do more jobs to make the same wage, more vents, brushes etc. Grants were a good idea but didn't pay as much as a domestic property so back to the (faster, quicker, home! scenario again) It was all about the quantity not the quality Overall, if cavity wall insulation is installed to a suitable property in the correct location by contentious installers its a good product. Some work better than others, I prefer Stone wool as opposed to Fibreglass, I hated beads. My current home has Fibreglass installed by a company from the North West, my frontage is quite exposed but I live in the centre of a big city, so nothing like the wilds of the West coast. Ive had no problems. These are my personal views, I have deliberately not named any companies I have worked for, some were good, others bad, one or 2 of them are still trading. That doesn't necessarily mean they are good though. There are good and bad installers in every trade who are pushed by greedy owners wanting their profits. This leads to corners being cut by the installers so that they can earn an honest crust.

Old school rules 😊

Great work. I like to use a little crowbar to move the brick around cos it can be really fiddly. Sometimes the other side of the brick is still good if you can't find a close match.

Nice job. Simple but effective. I'll be repointing once side of our house soon so I hope I can get it up to that kind of standard. Got an old brick wall to practice on first.

What would be the rough cost involved in the removal of cavity wall insulation? Small bungalow located in Hampshire?

Nice video, good to know. Will be better/safer to just insulate the external wall and let the cavity empty? Will still keep the house warmer?

Bit slow

You just gotta love a good tradesman.

Very good video.

Very helpful. Outstanding work and great explanation

Any recommendation for an alternative?

What material is this? Is it hydrophobic glass woll?

Hi My house is from 1988 and it is a big house. I just bought 1 and half years ago and i got big disappointment because i keep having sick in winter time due to the cold and freezing house and i keep paying high bills so i was thinking to get a external wall insulation so would you suggest that to me or what is your suggestion to me at this point please? Thank you very much Regards

Got it in my house that i bought a couple months ago (south wales), got the white wool shit and it has destroyed the property. Stupidly i didnt get a survey done prior to purchase. Havent claimed yet because i didnt know it existed until discovering your channel, so thank you! Edit: the white wall on the first floor is dry, except around some windows, but the problem is the ground floor where there is no DPC and i believe the water is just tracking up through the insulation from the ground

i got an imp that i have had for over 30 years and i have 3 backups working they are worth more to me than gold i have used this new wall tie detector and its ok on face brickwork wall tie replacement but i don't do any face brickwork wall tie jobs as you cant isolate them enough because of the size of the mortar bed joints it don't work that good on rendered walls as the cement render varies in thickness and don't pick up every wall tie like the imp did i got 10 years of work in me and i will put all my working imps up for sale if anyone interested

excellent video thanks the clearest Ive seen on pointing, I like the birds beak finish

I have old soot on my exterior bricks, can you recommend how to remove it please? Thx in advance

Did you mention your mix ratio? great video

Wet the wall first

Im in the process of having my gable end repointed...and am watching your videos to educate myself on how its done ... Thanks

Thats chit! The title is Re Pointing. This is just simple joimting.

Brilliant and a great help many thanks

Brilliance 👍🏻

cavity wall insulation should be forbidden altogether

Finesse! This guy definitely has the knack to this which I certainly don’t! I hopefully will be in time

I need to repoint the front of my house, it gets a lot of weather. I googled mortar mixes for repointing and got a lot of different answers, what would you suggest i use and what additives ? Thanks in advance.

Drilled a wall yesterday and the cavity was full of ants, the entire place was moving with them, have the video to prove it.

blah, blah, blah blah

Thanks for the video - what head insulation would you advise then?

Thanks for that

excellent!

Looks like he’s using a butter knife. Absolute skill

My house move (15 years ago) we had a very difficult buyer. One of his gripes was the house we were selling (1950) and zero problems did not have this cavity injected insulation. I told him what a bad idea that was, also (given the age of the house) I wouldn’t do it because of uncertainty regards the wall ties and interaction with the foam, plus the damp issues. He bought the house and told us he had arranged for the cavity insulation. He even told us the cost (thousands). Oh dear!

What's your view on the bonded (polystyrene) ball insulation, retro fitted?