External Wall Insulation Shambles

[JohnD]

UK home energy scheme has 98% failure rate on outside wall insulation​

"Rachel Millard in London
Published YESTERDAY

The UK government’s flagship energy efficiency scheme has been blighted by “unacceptably poor” work that has damaged people’s homes, according to government findings published on Monday.

Ninety-eight per cent of all external wall insulations fitted under the Energy Company Obligation scheme since 2022 need corrective work, as does 29 per cent of the internal wall insulation, according to the results of sample audits.In a written statement to the House of Commons, Martin McCluskey, minister for energy consumers, said the work had created “serious problems with mould and damp” in the worst cases.

McCluskey said the problems were the result of “unacceptably poor standards of work from a number of contractors, enabled by a flawed oversight and protection system established by the previous government”.

FT.com

 

[Deluks]

Is anyone surprised?

I'm not convinced that the same thing wouldn't happen under this government.

If any government has money to put into the housing sector it should be solely aimed at building new ones, not paying for people to have free building work done.

 

[JohnD]

It's my opinion that we should have some Regulations for Building standards

And we should have some Inspectors to Control Building work to ensure they were met.

They should probably be employed by some kind of Local public body that had Authority and was answerable to the electorate.

I'm surprised nobody thought of it before.

 

[Mottie]

I think every forum should have a know-it-all, seen-it-all, done-it-all big headed super poster who just looks for bad news all the time, who starts threads and cuts and pastes instead of just adding a link. I’m surprised diynot haven’t got one….

 

[noseall]

I think every forum should have a know-it-all, seen-it-all, done-it-all big headed super poster who just looks for bad news all the time, who starts threads and cuts and pastes instead of just adding a link. I’m surprised diynot haven’t got one….

STALKER ALERT!

 

[cdbe]

The only good scheme anyone ever did was selling loft insulation for £3 a roll in B&Q. The idea that sticking a bit of foam on a 3 bed semi and rendering it is worth £15,000 is laughable.

 

[^woody^]

The whole grant-funded retrofit concept is a stupid idea, badly implemented and badly installed. A proper political ECO knee-jerk.

We are cladding homes with a product that has a limited life - 20-30 years before the render fails and need replacement. And it will be en-mass when the time comes with all those problems of doing it all at once in large volumes. Similar for the PV on the roof or the new heating.
Many of these buildings are social housing, and these claddings are getting damaged by occupants and various service providers with no plan or appetite to repair the damage quickly leading to faster deterioration.

And to do all this we are altering entire street scenes, and ending up with a mish-mash of styles replacing traditional appearance with the choice of bland coloured render or fake bricks clearly artificial.

The whole process is a bureaucratic nightmare with a plethora of assessors, designers, coordinators, inspectors, evaluators, installers and other "experts", each with a questionable role but a required report and tick sheet of paperwork. All this paperwork must be lodged to a portal where it then sits unchecked and forgotten. And we are talking of several hundred pages per property! I'm convinced it's just one big job-creation Ponzi scheme.

And it turns out that all that paperwork was not checked, so the government instructed several of their favourite big firms to then instruct several more audit firms to then instruct many more surveying firms to then employ hundreds more surveyors to check the checkers! Madness.

And the minority of us who are actually paying taxes have not only paid for the initial work and all those jobs, but have paid for inspection of the work to tell us the work done was crap and all those involved were crap too, but no-doubt we will be paying for the remedial works - and the jobs of those doing it .... and checking it.

 

[stevie888]

Well said Woody.

 

[aveatry]

Yep you know what - this one should go into the climate thread and labelled ----- Feel Scammed yet.

 

[wessex101]

Over the years I've worked on a number of different public sector contracts, NHS, MOD, local authority, housing associations etc. The one common thread that runs through all of them is the staggering levels of waste, bureaucracy and institutional incompetence. Anything that is touched by the hand of a civil servant will be late, cost at least four times more than the original estimate and probably will not work.

If the general public ever realised just how much of their hard earnt money is wasted by our bloated public sector there would be widespread civil unrest. What we need is less government interference not more.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Corrective work? It might just have a bit of sealant missing.

I'm sure there is AN issue, but I doubt it's anything like as bad as the stupid headline implies.

External insulation can be a very good thing.

 

[^woody^]

Corrective work? It might just have a bit of sealant missing.

I'm sure there is AN issue, but I doubt it's anything like as bad as the stupid headline implies.

External insulation can be a very good thing.

The work is assessed against five-point criteria from no risk to severe risk [.... of the measure failing]. With all the insulation and air tightness, there is a massive risk of internal damp and mould if things are not designed and installed correctly

Minor snagging that won' impact the measure is no or low risk. But in your example a missing bit of sealant say on a bit of fascia may well be minor snagging and wont affect the EWI, but a missing bit of sealant on the EWI will have potential to affect the EWI as water will then get in and freeze so that's a higher risk.

The work has to be designed, and a comprehensive design and installation pack is produced. The work must then be done in full accordance with the design - no changes, no freestyling no "we did this on the last job". Full accordance or agreed certified variance.

There was a lot of bad work - uncertified/inappropriate design and poor installation. There was even more work that was not done in accordance with the design - and at risk of failure of the component and/or failure of the intended result .... warm, dry, mould-free home that's efficient to heat.

So yes there was more work at risk than not at risk, and by those criteria it was well into the 90% at risk range.

 

[JohnD]

I'm sure there is AN issue, but I doubt it's anything like as bad as the stupid headline implies.

The FT is not renowned for stupidity or false scare stories.

There were some people who disagreed with its early exposure of the Bra Baroness. They were wrong.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I've seen a number of recent stories in the FT that make me think it's becoming just another tabloid.

It's changed hands a couple of times recently. All newspapers are fighting for readers.

 

[Jurassicspark]

​

The UK government’s flagship energy efficiency scheme has been blighted by “unacceptably poor”

I wonder what they mean by “unacceptably poor”.

consumers, said the work had created “serious problems with mould and damp” in the worst cases.

Was it because of the external insulation or because of the uneducated habits that the consumers do usually, with or without EWI.

And coupled with the inherent problems consumers create before the advent of this EWI scheme which then looks like EWI is the one that is causing the problem.