Thermal Insulation Upgrade

Listed Farm Building

Table of Content — open

Overview of the Project

This 200 year-old listed farm house consists of two sections: the building and the tower.

The tower having 3 external walls has been the coldest part of the building. Due to the listed status of the building only a breathable thermal insulation solution could have been considered and approved by the conservation officer.

As the internal space was at premium, a high-performance thin-profile thermal insulation would have been the ideal choice.

To confirm to all these requirements a combination of two lime insulation materials has been proposed and used:

20 mm Termonitonaco 2020 MGN high-performance lime insulation plaster
10 mm Termorasante Aerogel MGN superinsulating lime-aerogel insulation plaster

These 2 plaster coats, combined into a 30 mm breathable thermal insulation, have reduced the heat losses of the tower by about 4 times, reducing the U-value from an assumed 2.00 before to a 0.56 U-value after.

U-value-core-conservation — U-value calculation: 30 mm breathable thermal insulation

To make the thermal insulation perform at its best, the insulation has not been applied directly onto the wall but onto a special lime base: the Rinzaffo MGN Roman salt-resistant and waterproof lime base coat. This performs several important functions, directly affecting the performance and longevity of the thermal insulation:

Being waterproof, it keeps the thermal insulation dry. Thus, it improves its thermal performance, as a damp insulation performs much worse than a dry one.
Salt-resistant: by blocking the hygroscopic salts, the Roman base protects the insulation from premature mechanical breakdown as a result of alt crystallization.. This extends the longevity of the thermal insulation by about 5-10 times.

Here is a photo gallery about the application of the Termorasante Aerogel MGN superinsulating lime-aerogel thermal plaster during this project..