Wimbledon Victorian Home: Spacetherm® A1 for Solid Wall Insulation

Contractors Hale have worked to strip the house back to bare brickwork, while also constructing a new rear extension. With internal space at a premium, the client’s architect chose the unique combination of performance characteristics offered by aerogel insulation for solid brick walls to upgrade the walls’ thermal performance.

Jos Gibson, Contract Manager at Hale

“Our installers weren’t familiar with Spacetherm. It’s amazing that something so thin offers the thermal performance that it does.”

Aerogel is produced through the supercritical drying of silica gel until the liquid component has dried out and been replaced with gas. The resulting lightweight material has a low thermal conductivity, and is also hydrophobic and vapour open.

However, the rigid material is extremely brittle. To create a more usable product, the silica aerogel is embedded into a polyester or glass fibre carrier fleece. This gives it flexibility without compromising the integrity of the material or its excellent thermal properties.

Spacetherm A1’s vapour openness helps to maintain the ‘breathability’ of traditional solid wall constructions. This can support the seasonal drying out of damp masonry, if necessary, and where the whole wall build-up is specified with this aim in mind.

Spacetherm insulation is often supplied bonded to plasterboard or magnesium oxide. In this case, specifying Spacetherm A1 blanket has allowed a batten service void to be created between the insulation and the internal boarded finish.

Jos Gibson, Contract Manager at Hale

“The great thing about the Spacetherm blanket is its thickness. That makes such a difference to the wall depths.”

Find out more: https://proctorgroup.com/products/spacetherm