Hello! Im Maurice Beinat, Technical Director at ecoMaster and today we're going to
have a look at fitting polyester wall batts into a new construction such as
this. So maybe you're building an extension to your home,
or having a major renovation or maybe you're a builder of a new project.
There's a couple of things to watch out for in doing this.
The very first thing is of course, any installation must not protrude beyond
the face of the studs, otherwise the plasters are going to have a bit of a
problem putting the plasterboard on. So remember it's crucially important not to
cause a problem for other trades. The other trade that you might be causing a
problem for is the electrician, so we need to cut around power outlets and
light switches very carefully, so that they can fit those off without screwing
into the polyester batt. Other things that you're going to find along the way that
you're going to have to get around or things like pipes, and electrical wiring,
so you might need to split the batt along the edge to tuck in or either side of
these things. So let's take a look now - the other thing is that maybe sometimes
the back is going to fit perfectly between the studs and so just as we need
to tear a link. And other times you're going to need to turn the batt sideways
and tear sections and in that case usually there's a section at the top
that needs to be specially cut, and we'll have a look at how to do that in a
separate video. So now let's have a look at fitting batts into a new construction
such as this; both where they fit perfectly and where you have to turn and
tear them. Here's an example of a stud space where the batt is going to fit just
perfectly across the space. Just start at the bottom, tuck in and
sometimes depending on the exact position of the noggin, you might need to
tear a little bit off the batt at the top, but in this case it all just tucks in
beautifully. And notice that it doesn't pillow out and doesn't protrude beyond
the front of the studs. It's very important. Well now it's time to infill
this part, and we can see that if we just put the batt straight in there it's not
going to fit, so we do need to turn and tear. Before we do that, let me take a
moment to explain the structure of these batts. When they're made, all the fibers
are aligned this way. So that means that we can tear the batt down this way pretty
easily. But we certainly can't tear it this way.
So we've got a special method for cutting this way which we're going to
show in a separate video. But now what we need to do is to just measure to
length, and then simply tear the batt like that.
And tuck neatly into place. Now we're going to need to tear another piece and
cut it to fit especially in there. Here's a piece that I prepared earlier, and it's
good to mark with a sharpie, where you're going to cut. And then once we cut
that it's going to slot straight in there. Keep your off cuts because they're
going to come in handy elsewhere. Well there we have it,
we've cut the piece, there's the off cut, and there's the piece that we want. And
so we can just tuck it neatly
into place like that.
And carry on.
One of the things that you have to watch out for are power outlets and and light
switches. So we need to make sure that we're going to cut a nice big section
out of the batt so that the electrician has got space to push the wires into, and
also when he splits off the power point or light switch, his screws aren't going
to bind into the polyester. So I've marked around the power outlet and now
we're going to cut that section out.