How To Measure Up For Wall Insulation

Insulating your walls is a great way to reduce energy costs and make your home more comfortable; however, measuring up for wall insulation can be tricky. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you measure up properly. The process for measuring an existing wall in an older home is slightly different. To learn more about measuring an already finished wall check out our blog on How to measure up for wall insulation in an existing home.

What Do I Need to Know? 

In order to calculate the amount of insulation you need for your walls you need to find out 3 things:

1. The surface area of the wall in square metres (m2)
2. The depth of the void in millimetres (the available space inside your wall).
3. The spacings of the timber stud structure inside your wall (this allows you to select the best size variant of insulation to reduce or entirely eliminate material wastage). 

Length, multiplied by height, equals success?

For a new construction measuring a wall for insulation is easily done once the stud structure of your wall has been built. Simply measure the overall width of the full wall and subtract the combined thickness of the timber studs from the width, then multiply that number by the overall height of the wall (no need to subtract here). This will give you the area of this wall’s void in square metres.

Allowing for doors and windows

If the wall has openings like a door, a window or multiple of either, you will need to subtract their area from the total given that you do not need to insulate those areas. To do so, like before you need to multiply the width by the height of those openings to find the area of them. Then subtract the area of the openings from the total area of the wall.

The sizes of Batt insulation

Finally, measure the opening in width between two studs to determine which size of insulation is best suited to you and double check the depth of your studs to know what thickness of insulation you can use. The majority of homes will have 90mm deep studs. In Queensland it is not uncommon to have 75mm deep studs instead. This structure is normally set at intervals of either 600mm centre to centre or the new standard of 450mm centre to centre. Most insulation batts are available either 580mm wide or 430mm wide to suit these standard spacings.

Planning makes almost perfect

If you have a copy of the Construction Issue building plans of your home, perhaps the easiest way to measure up your wall for insulation is to calculate the area based on the dimensions shown on the elevation drawing. All you need to do is multiply the length of the wall by the width, subtracting any openings. You can then find the depth of your wall on its respective floor plan. Sometimes the wall depth, or thickness, is denoted as a wall type, of which the size is then specified on a separate page of the document. 

Be careful, sometimes a builder will have to go  “off script” and alter the plans to combat unforeseen constraints that arise during the building process, this is simply a fact of constructing a building.  

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What’s Next?

We hope this article has helped you learn how to use simple ways to save on your utility bill. This in turn will help you on your energy and thermal efficiency retrofit journey to make your home more comfortable all year round, and reduce your costs and carbon emissions.   

Next, learn how to install wall insulation with Maurice.

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