Do-it-yourself insulated blind area around the house: rules, material, installation features

An insulated blind area—a durable decorative strip encircling the foundation—helps turn a house into a fortress, making it warm and waterproof.The simple design is designed to protect the foundation from rain or melt water, the soil from freezing, and also to retain heat inside the building. Therefore, builders who know all the negative consequences of the lack of thermal insulation recommend paying attention to this stage of work when building a house.

In what cases is insulation necessary?

Installing an insulated blind area with your own hands is a separate stage of construction and installation work. A slightly sloping path, limited in width, bordering the perimeter of the building, plays the role of a transition zone between the ground and the house. Without proper finishing, this area becomes a bridge of cold that penetrates inside, significantly increasing the loss of precious heat. To prevent leakage, additional thermal insulation must be installed.

To many, such events seem unnecessary, but insulated blind area around the house with your own hands plays an important role:

1. It diverts water flows from the foundation of the building, allowing it to flow in the opposite direction.
2. Significantly reduces heat loss, protecting the underground and basement parts of the house.
3. Replaces the sidewalk, guaranteeing unhindered movement near walls.
4. Gives the building and surrounding area an impeccable appearance.

At the same time, the insulated blind area allows the soil, heated during the summer season, to maintain positive temperatures longer, helping to retain heat better and longer inside the building.As a result, the costs of constructing an insulated blind area help to save on heating the house for many years.

Useful: How to make a blind area around the house with your own hands

In what cases is insulation not required?

Many owners do not know whether it is really necessary to insulate the blind area. Although sometimes you can really skip this stage and lay a regular path instead of an insulated one.

Insulation of the blind area is refused if:

• reliable insulation of the foundation of the house has been completed;
• the building stands on solid and stable soil with minimal seasonal movement;
• The foundation was chosen to be a pile-grillage foundation, reliably protected from frost heaving.

The construction of an insulated blind area can be neglected if the building was erected on a deep foundation and the base soil layer is located below the freezing level.

What material is suitable for insulation?

When choosing an external covering for a blind area, the design preferences of the home owner, the properties of the material, and construction technology are usually taken into account. For aesthetic decoration and protection of the house from external influences, the following types of coatings are used today:

• concrete;
• from crushed stone and gravel;
• lawn grass;
• paving stones;
• paving slabs;
• porcelain stoneware

An insulated blind area involves laying an additional heat-insulating layer. The ideal “candidate” should be:

• high thermal insulation characteristics;
• low moisture absorption;
• resistance to fungi and living organisms;
• long service life.

Unfortunately, not all materials intended for constructing an insulated blind area meet these criteria.

Therefore, the following types are most often used:

• expanded clay granules;
• foam sheets;
• sprayed polyurethane foam;
• extruded polystyrene foam boards.

In order not to make a mistake with the purchase of a heat insulator for the construction of an insulated blind area, you need to familiarize yourself in detail with the main contenders.

Expanded clay

If you choose a material taking into account a simplified installation scheme, you can be sure that expanded clay has no competitors. Small round porous granules, obtained by firing clay or clay shale, do not cause any difficulty in installation: they are poured into a trench onto a previously leveled and compacted cushion so that the height of the expanded clay layer is about half a meter.

Other advantages of expanded clay:

• low specific gravity;
• fire safety;
• biological resistance;
• non-toxic;
• ability to withstand long-term loads;
• ease of use.

Creating a decorative path using expanded clay granules is the best option in terms of material costs. However, the material also has a drawback - high moisture absorption. Therefore, expanded clay is always laid with an additional layer of high-quality waterproofing material.

Styrofoam

A fairly common lightweight insulation material, ideal for creating an insulated contour around the house with your own hands. It is characterized by low cost, excellent thermal insulation properties, and ease of installation.

The benefits of polystyrene foam:

• does not require deep foundations;
• reduces space heating costs;
• increases the service life of the insulated blind area, foundation and the building itself.

However, insulation has a number of disadvantages:

• absorbs water;
• provides a suitable habitat for rodents;
• under the influence of frost it becomes brittle, as a result of which it quickly collapses.

Professionals rarely advise using polystyrene foam when arranging a path around the perimeter of a building, indicating that there is no need for additional waterproofing.

We read: How to properly make a blind area around a house with paving slabs.

Polyurethane foam

A relatively new, but quite effective liquid heat insulator has gained popularity due to its ability to adhere to any surface. Contained in pressure cylinders, applied by spraying. Due to the absence of seams, it does not allow moisture to pass through, so it does not require additional waterproofing.

Other advantages of PPU:

• retains heat for a long period;
• not subject to decomposition and destruction;
• withstands maximum temperature changes;
• not afraid of exposure to fire and aggressive compounds (salts, alkalis);
• has low moisture absorption;
• resists biological effects.

The construction of a functional contour around a house with polyurethane foam insulation is relatively expensive due to the high cost of the material and installation services, so it is not popular when constructing a blind area yourself.

Penoplex

Extruded polystyrene foam - the best option for insulating a decorative path. The material is used where other insulators cannot cope with the task assigned to them.

Penoplex has a lot of positive qualities, including:

• high density, elasticity;
• ability to withstand significant loads;
• resistance to temperature changes, maximum positive and negative temperatures;
• high resistance to fire;
• environmental Safety;
• relatively light weight;
• long service life.

The slabs are joined using the tongue-and-groove method to ensure maximum fit of the edges and tightness of the seam joints.

For you: Is it possible to insulate a wooden house from the outside with penoplex?

Features of installing an insulated blind area

If you have certain construction skills and detailed instructions, you can build a path along the walls of a built house yourself. But since the work will require physical effort, it is better to choose in advance the most suitable design of the insulated blind area.

Hard option

This type of blind area involves the installation of external finishing using concrete or asphalt concrete mixture. The design is highly weather resistant and has a long service life.

Creating an insulated blind area of ​​this type with your own hands is not difficult if you take into account several nuances:

1. To cast a monolithic base, frost-resistant concrete grade M250-300 is used. And to prevent cracking, the filling is done in one go.
2. Before pouring the concrete mixture, the insulated blind area is strengthened with reinforcement bars or reinforcing mesh.
3. If the base of the blind area is finished with decorative material: tiles, paving stones, stone, the gaps are filled with bitumen solution, and not with a cement mixture, which quickly cracks with frequent contact with water.

If you ignore these tips, within a year the insulated blind area will become unusable, which will increase heat loss and entail additional costs for repair work.

Soft design

This option for an insulated blind area is considered more reliable if the house is built on moving soil that is susceptible to swelling.Such a structure, the top layer of which is made of pebbles, lawn grass or paving slabs, is assembled according to a simplified scheme, and it is also resistant to vibrations of the ground layers.

The soft design of the insulated blind area provides for the use of high-quality drainage in the “pie,” in particular, a profiled membrane. She:

• is not subject to deformation and damage due to soil swelling;
• withstands the lowest possible temperatures;
• has high moisture resistance;
• removes moisture from the foundation;
• has a long service life;
• easy to install.

In addition, a soft insulated blind area is more economical and repairable compared to concrete.

When constructing an insulated blind area around a building, the “pie” is assembled in a certain sequence and in strict accordance with the instructions. To get reliable coverage, you should consider some recommendations:

1. If the soil is clayey, the depth of the trench should be about half a meter. On loose soil it is increased to 600 mm.
2. To stabilize loose, mobile soil, a layer of well-dried clay is laid. The compaction of the clay “protection” is carried out at a slight slope in the direction opposite to the building.
3. One of the components of the “pie” of an insulated blind area is sand. The role of the material is to make the area before laying the heat insulator as level as possible, so its quantity can be arbitrary.
4. High-quality leveling of the clay or sand layer can be achieved if a vibrating plate is used to compact it.
5. Since sand (sea, river) has increased flowability, it is recommended to mix it with loam. This will make the mixture denser and increase its waterproofness.
6. When installing an insulated blind area, the thickness of the heat-insulating material is selected so that it can retain the heat of the earth for a long period. For central Russia, this figure is: for a path - 100 mm, for a foundation - 50 mm.
7. The height of the edge of the insulated blind area adjacent to the base of the house must be at least 30 cm to ensure the drainage of melt or rain water in the direction opposite to the foundation.

The installation of an insulated blind area around the perimeter of the house plays an important role in strengthening the foundation, preserving heat in the house and basement, which is especially important for residents of regions with harsh climates. But in order for the insulated area to perform all the functions assigned to it, it is necessary to cover the foundation and base of the house with thermal insulation material. And then the question: why insulate the blind area will disappear by itself.

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What do you think: is it necessary to spend money on building an insulated blind area or is it better to save money and lay a regular path? If the article turned out to be useful, add it to bookmarks, and share a link to it on social networks and on thematic forums. Write in the comments whether you have ever encountered heat leaks due to the fact that the blind area was left uninsulated, and what heat-insulating materials seem to be the most effective.