Insulating your home walls is a great solution to warm it on those freezing nights. However, despite being reasonably simple, insulating walls from the inside isn’t something you can pick up and learn on your own.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to insulate walls from the inside without the help of anyone but your family members.
Why Should You Insulate Your Walls?
If you live in a cold area, insulating your walls will make the indoor temperature considerably warmer.
The insulation increases the heat retention at home, which keeps you warm and cuts down on the heater’s electricity bills.
People often opt for external insulation as it provides better results. However, it’s more expensive and usually requires a professional.
On the other hand, internal insulation is fairly simpler, and you can learn to do it yourself. It even allows you to selectively insulate rooms, which you can’t do with external insulation. Your HVAC system has to work less and this means that you have to use less electricity.
How to Insulate Walls From the Inside
Now that we understand the general idea of insulation, let’s have a look at how to do it from the inside.
Here Are the Materials You Will Need:
To insulate the walls internally, you’ll need:
-The insulation material itself which can be cotton or wool
-Plasterboards to cover the insulation
-Plasterboard nails to fix the plasterboard in place
-A strong tape to seal any gaps
-Support clips on the ground and the ceiling to hold the insulation in place
-Joining clips to act as a support for the window support clips
-Midway supports to hold the insulation in place
-Support track to hold the midway supports in place
-Nylon hammer fixings
-Here Are the Tools You Will Need:
-A pencil and a tape measure for drawing the outline
-A rule piece of wood
-A level to ensure parallelism
-A box cutter to cut the insulating material
-A hammer for the nylon fixings
-Cutting pliers to cut the support clips
-A drill to fix the plaster hammers
Steps to Insulate Your Walls
Your goal for the whole process is to create a supporting frame in which you can place your insulation material inside.
This supporting frame should have an equal distance from the wall throughout the room you’re lining.
Once you make that supporting frame and place your insulation material inside, you’ll need to install the plasterboards to cover them.
Now let’s talk about the details:
Mark Your Boundaries
Attach your level to your rule and place them against the wall. Check the level to ensure complete parallelism with the wall, then mark the ground and the ceiling.
If there’s a protruding window inside the room, you’ll have to measure how far in it is and whether you need to adjust your marks or not.
Once you’re confident that your boundaries are away from any windows, draw the outlines that indicate the thickness of your insulation and the position of your support clips.
Start Creating the Framework
Pick up that support track and place it horizontally on the walls. You should aim to put it midway between the ceiling and the ground.
Use your drill to make holes through the support track and the wall, then use the nylon hammer fixings to keep the support track in place.
Your holes should be around 10–12 inches apart from each other. This will ensure ideal fixation without unnecessary extra effort or waste of nails.
Remember the lines you drew on the ground and on the ceiling? You’ll need to fix the support clips on those lines.
For the ground support clips, drill holes every 10–12 inches and fix them in place using the nylon hammer fixings. As for the ceiling ones, you’ll need the plasterboard nails and the drill to fix them in place.
Install Your Midway Supports
Within your horizontally installed support track, drill holes every 22–23 inches and install your midway supports using those trusty nylon fixings.
Keep in mind that if you install midway support close to the window, you should keep it at least 4 inches away from the window’s frame. Any less than that, and you’ll have great difficulty when you install the insulating material.
Install Your Wall Insulating Material
Use your tape measure to measure the distance between the ground and the ceiling, add half an inch, then cut your insulating material to increments of the resulting height.
The extra half-inch will ensure a snug fit within your created support framework. Next, impale the insulating material into the midway supports and ensure they’re tightly snug behind the upper and lower support clips.
By this point, you’ll have your insulating material everywhere except under the window.
Secure the Framework in Place
The insulating material is now snug, but you’ll need to hold the whole structure together. Use the cutting pliers to cut the support clips according to the ground-ceiling height you measured earlier.
Then snug the freshly cut support clips between the upper and lower support clips. Keep in mind that you need to place these vertical support clips on the midway supports to lock them together.
At this point, you’ll need to measure the gap between the window edges to place a new support clip under it. This support clip will hang on the joining clips. This step is a little confusing to read, so it’s better if we show you.
Install Your Window Insulating Material
Now that you have a mini framework under the window, you’ll need to cut the insulating material accordingly and snug it in place.
Use strong tape between the joints of the insulating material for maximum insulation.
Now use the midway support clips just like you just saw in the video and install the vertical holding support clips.
Repeat the mini framework step above the window and place the insulating material using the same technique.
Install the plasterboard
Now that your entire wall is insulated, cut the plasterboard according to the measurements of your wall and then install them in place.
At this point, it’s a game of measuring and cutting. Once you cut the right-sized piece of plasterboard, fix it in place using plasterboard nails.
Final Words
That was how to insulate walls from the inside. The process will take anywhere between a couple of hours to a few hours, depending on how big your house is and how many rooms you are insulating.
The process is safe, easy to learn, and can be done without a professional. Just make sure that you use the right tools in the correct order.
