Internal wall insulation in Erdington.

What kind of homes are there in Erdington?

Erdington grew in stages, and you can see it street by street. Closer to the High Street and Six Ways there are Victorian and Edwardian terraces and some larger villas, typically with solid brick walls, a front bay and a narrow back addition. Further out, the housing is mostly interwar: semis, short terraces and council-built estates from the 1920s and 1930s.

• Victorian and Edwardian terraces: solid walls, cold back additions, mould around kitchens and bathrooms.
• Interwar semis: front bays, often lightweight bay panels, cold front bedrooms.
• Interwar council-built homes: many now privately owned, some solid walled, some cavity.

Because Erdington sits between those eras, I see more mixed results here than in a single-era suburb. Two houses five minutes apart can need completely different work.

How can I tell if my walls are solid before anyone visits?

There are three simple checks you can do yourself.

These are clues, not proof. Some 1930s houses have a cavity behind a decorative bond, and render hides everything. I check properly on the visit, and if a cavity can simply be filled I will tell you that is the cheaper first step.

Why is the back of my Erdington terrace colder than the front?

Because the back addition, the narrow wing with the kitchen and the bathroom above it, usually has three outside walls instead of one. It also has the steamiest rooms in the house. Cold walls plus moisture is the recipe for condensation, and that is why mould so often starts in the back bedroom or bathroom.

Insulating the outside walls of that wing warms the surfaces, and better extraction removes the moisture. I organise ventilation through trusted trades so both sides are covered. The guide to one bedroom colder than the rest walks through how I decide which room to start with.

What about the interwar semis with bay windows?

Many of them have the same weak spot: a lightweight panel under and beside the bay, often timber and tiles with a thin lining inside. It looks like solid wall from inside the room, but it loses heat quickly and lets draughts in.

If that is your house, the bay is usually the first job. The bay window insulation page for Birmingham explains what I find when I open these bays up, and the room by room guide for 1930s semis shows how a whole house can be done in stages.

Is it worth insulating if I might sell in a few years?

It can be, but I will be honest about it. Internal wall insulation is mainly about comfort: a room you can use in January, walls that do not grow mould, less reliance on a plug-in heater. Those benefits start the first winter.

A warmer, mould-free bedroom is also easier to sell than one with black corners, and better walls can help an EPC, although the rating depends on the whole house. If you are moving within a year, a smaller job such as treating the worst wall or the bay may make more sense than a whole-house plan.

The IWI buyer's guide sets out the questions worth asking any installer, including me.

Which insulation would you use in an Erdington house?

It depends on the wall, not the postcode. For older solid brick, especially where there is any sign of damp, I usually lean towards a breathable system: wood fibre boards finished in lime. It costs around £3,000 per wall and takes about five days. On a dry, sound wall, PIR fixed with PU adhesive is thinner and faster, usually £2,300 to £3,000 over three to four days.

Thickness is typically 20mm to 80mm per wall including plaster. Moisture modelling before the job tells me how far I can safely go. The comparison of thermal plasterboard, wood fibre and PIR explains the trade-offs.

Do you come out to Erdington?

Yes. Erdington is usually 25 to 30 minutes from my base in Bloxwich, depending on the M6 and the A38. I cover the surrounding areas too, including Kingstanding, Four Oaks and the rest of Birmingham.

Every job starts the same way: a free home visit, a moisture check and a written quotation. Then a pre-start guide, the work itself and a follow-up call about four weeks after handover. The full process is set out step by step.