How can I super insulate my walls – part three: up out of the ground …

Having laid the two courses of dense concrete blocks were realised that a row of wall ties was required just below ground level.  To fit these we had to drill into the polystyrene and glue the wall ties in with Chem Fix.

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Prior to the walls going up we had to build window boxes. These will close the cavity between the two brick walls and support the windows.

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We are using wall ties made of basalt known as Teplo ties supplied by the Green Building Store. They are very low conductivity at just 0.7 W/mK. A new variant of the Teplo tie has just been released with a metal fixing fitted to the end known as Teplo ‘L’ ties. These new ties were much easier to fix to the wall instead of using chem-fix with the regular Teplo ties.

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With the ties on site just in time we were ready for Dave and Pete to start laying bricks.

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At the corner of the front of the house we needed to key in the new wall to the existing. This required the removal of every other brick up the corner.

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We tried a specialist tool for cutting the perpend but found very careful use of the Stihl saw was the best solution.

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The new bricks are a very different colour to the old ones. We very much hope the brick tinting will work.

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It took us a little while to work out who should fit the insulation.

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Given my focus (some would say obsession) on the insulation, before very long I decided to install the insulation myself.

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