our walls are not thick enough in England compared to Poland

[banjodeano]

I have just come back from Poland, and it was bloomin freezing, but in all the buildings it was lovely and warm, even our apartment that was large and had a high ceiling, and it was heated only by a medium sized radiator waswarm.....but i noticed all the old buildings had walls over 18 inches...so how come we don't adopt the same building techniques

 

[libby lou lou]

...so how come we don't adopt the same building techniques icon_cry.gif

We don't live in poland.

 

[mattylad]

Errrr... Mine are 22" thick.
But then it was built in 1855.

 

[Nige F]

sounds like t`Lancashire mill

 

[Whitespirit66]

If you have deep pockets, you can have walls as deep as you want. However, most people who buy new houses in this country can just about scrape together a king's ransom for the deposit on their shonky Barratt rabbit hutch.

Labour, land and materials are expensive, so everything is built down to a price. Newer homes are on the whole better insulated than older properties, but this is achieved with materials with a good insulating performance to cost ratio. Solid or cavity 20" walls don't satisfy this criteria. Other low cost methods are used like air-tightness to reduce drafts, double glazing and loft insulation.

Know what you are saying about buildings in Central Europe. I regularly go to the Czech Republic. I'm surprised how such small rads can comfortably heat the rooms there. As you have found, the walls are very thick and often they have two sets of windows. One inner, one outer with a 10" gap between the two. I think you will find that this is mainly on older buildings though, when labour and materials were cheap. Newer buildings in these countries are more like ours.

 

[JohnD]

many European countries build the walls out of hollow "pot" bricks, which are of course not very strong, but have better insulation. I was surprised to learn that lots of UK clay contains a little shale oil which means that during firing they fuel themselves to some extent, so the cost of fuel for solid bricks is less high than in some other regions.

You are certainly at liberty, should you so wish, to clad the external walls of your home with insulating slabs of any thickness you wish, either on the outside or (cheaper) on the inside.

One of the reasons some European countries have much better insulation than UK homes is because, not being surrounded by the Atlantic, they tend to have longer, colder, continental winters. Homes in the US are also less temperate than ours.

If you go to southern European or mediterranean homes you will find they have much worse insulation than us.

The decision is based on how much money you want to spend on insulation, and how much money it will save you.