Shay Lally Quantity surveyor

IN OUR NEW series, The Big Reno Clinic, Houses to Restore QS Shay Lally provides answers and solutions to the big (and little, but important) questions you may have about making the most of your home.

Send your question to reno@thejournal.ie.

This week’s question:

What’s the biggest bang for my buck when trying to improve my BER?

Shay says:

With heating and gas costs climbing and winter on the way, this is the question I want to answer this week — because improving your BER doesn’t have to mean a full deep retrofit, and I know most people don’t have that kind of budget sitting around.

My answer: insulate your attic first.

A better BER just means less heat escaping from your home — which means lower bills and a warmer home. Heat loss roughly broken down looks like this: 25% through the roof, 35% through the exterior walls, 25% through windows and doors, and 15% through the floors. Your heating system and solar panels matter too, but let’s start with the fabric of the building.

You’d think walls would be the priority, since they lose the most heat. But when you run the numbers insulating your attic wins every time — it’s cheaper, far less disruptive than stripping and insulating walls, and there are grants available to bring the cost down further. Insulating your attic delivers the best return for the least money and hassle. That’s your starting point.

The trap: attic insulation isn’t just rolling out some wool and walking away. Done properly, it also needs:

• roof vents fitted, so the roof space can still breathe,
• covers over any downlighters in upstairs rooms (or throughout a bungalow), so insulation isn’t packed against a hot fitting, and
• the ducting for any extractor fan accounted for, not just buried under insulation.

I’d also always recommend an airtight attic hatch – ideally with a fold-down ladder, so you’ll actually use it and some flooring laid down so you can still get to tanks, a boiler, or anything else stored up there. If you skip these recommendations you’ll reduce the effect of the insulation, have no storage and make it difficult to access.

If you’re improving your BER in stages, after insulating your attic is replacing your windows and doors and insulating the exterior walls – if you’re planning to replace your heating system and insulating internally I recommend replacing your windows and doors, insulating the walls and replacing your heating system at the same time. After that I’d install solar panels.

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If you’ve just bought spent all of your money a fixer-upper and don’t have the money to renovate it just yet — and a lot of the people I talk to through Houses to Restore are in this position, as all of their money is spent on buying the house itself — there are still cheap wins that make the place liveable over winter. And if you fall into this category please note first time buyers are eligible for an increased grant of up to €2500 to insulate their attic.

• Swap every bulb in the house for LED
• Fit a lagging jacket to your hot water cylinder (or replace it to an insulated cylinder, if it’s old)
• Replace any perished or damaged seals on your windows and doors

None of these will transform your BER on their own, but they’ll cut your bills and take the edge off the cold while you save for the bigger jobs.

Start with the attic. Everything else can wait.

Shay will be back answering your questions next week. Send him your pressing queries on managing a renovation to reno@thejournal.ie.