As energy costs continue to climb, it's no longer a case of 'can you afford to insulate your walls?' but 'can you afford not to?' Insulating walls can reduce potential heat loss by 25%. Unfortunately, until recently, creating that extra warmth and comfort came with some serious discomfort — retrofitting insulation to existing buildings was a dirty, time-consuming affair. Homeowners had two options: ripping off the wall lining, installing building paper and bulk insulation and then re-lining, or drilling unsightly holes in the outside cladding and injecting foam insulation into the wall cavity. Either way, users had to apply for building consent, which could cost upwards of $500, and were potentially creating mould and rot problems by filling a ventilated cavity.

With Kingspan's ingenious idea of combining insulation with plasterboard, the process has been made easy for homeowners to insulate themselves against painful power bills.

As these new 2-in-1 pre-insulated plasterboard panels are applied directly to interior walls, there's no need to demolish existing plasterboard. Installers can also forget about the gloves and mask — being fibre and CFC-free, they're easy to handle and comfortable to work with. As there's no demo, renovations can be done room by room.

Only 50mm thick, pre-insulated plasterboard will increase the R-value of any wall to R2.0. As the panels form a continuous insulation barrier, they also do away with traditional insulation's problem of heat loss through thermal bridging. And because the wall cavity isn't being filled, it is able to breathe and stay dry.