Apartment insulation in Batumi: water, noise, cold and mould

Four kinds of insulation and what each one protects against

Apartment insulation in Batumi protects against four problems: water from the wet areas, noise from the neighbours, cold through the outside walls, and mould. Mould usually appears where water or cold hasn't been dealt with, or where the air in the apartment isn't replaced. Each job has its own materials and its own place in the renovation schedule, it is a separate line in the estimate, and you can order it on its own.

People come to us either with an apartment in black or white frame, where they want to build in bathroom and balcony waterproofing and quiet from the neighbours from the start, or with a specific problem in an apartment they live in: a stain on the ceiling downstairs, a damp corner, voices through the bedroom wall.

The cause first, then the layer

A dark corner below the ceiling can be the trace of a leak from the balcony above, of cold concrete, or of an apartment nobody aired all winter. It looks the same every time, but the cure is different. Insulation on a wall that is wet from a leak only hides the water, and within a year the patch comes through the new lining.

Before the estimate, the foreman measures the moisture in the base with a moisture meter, uses an infrared thermometer to find corners and reveals that are colder than the rest of the wall, and looks for traces of water on the ceiling and around the risers. Noise works the same way: sound often gets round a wall through the sockets, gaps at the slab and the riser boxing.

Sometimes no insulation is needed at all. Damp in a bedroom where people sleep with the window shut is cured by an air inlet vent and working extraction, and insulation would change nothing there. If there is mould already, the first line in the estimate is mould treatment of the walls, and new layers go only onto a clean, dry base.

The order of insulation work in a renovation

In a black or white frame apartment and in a full renovation, every kind of insulation falls into the rough stage. Our order is:

1. We fix leaks and dry the walls: no layer goes onto a wet base.
2. We strip affected finishes and treat the concrete and plaster with antiseptic.
3. We put up the frames, standing directly on the floor slab: with sound-insulating mineral wool on the shared walls and ceiling, and with insulation and a vapour barrier on the outside walls. Cables and back boxes go into the frame straight away.
4. We photograph the layers and close them up with plasterboard.
5. Where the neighbours below need quiet, we pour a floating screed on a soundproofing mat. A perimeter strip separates it from the walls and the lining.
6. We waterproof the bathroom over the screed, with tape in the corners and the layer carried up the walls, and keep water on it for 24 hours.

The frame goes up before the floor: lining that stands on a floating screed ties the floor to the wall, and footsteps bypass the mat. Doing it the other way round, after the finishes, is expensive. Waterproofing under laid tiles can't be checked until the tiles come off, and soundproof lining on a finished wall means new skim coat, new paint and moving every socket.

Where layers help each other and where they get in the way

One wall often needs two kinds of insulation, and they have to be combined. The wall between the bathroom and the bedroom gets sound-insulating wool in the frame, moisture-resistant plasterboard and waterproofing over the board in the shower area. In a wall like this we use water-repellent stone wool: it absorbs almost no water if any does get inside.

A corner bedroom sometimes needs both: the outside wall is cold, and people live behind the next one. On the outside wall we fit insulation with a vapour barrier, and on the shared wall a soundproofing frame without membrane. Where the walls meet, we take a strip of insulation onto the shared wall and continue the membrane over it, because this corner is where the cold most often gets round the layer.

Thermal insulation and soundproofing are not interchangeable. Extruded polystyrene holds in heat well but does almost nothing against noise, so for quiet we use mineral wool or a purpose-made mat. A balcony is a different job: the layer must not mind water, so extruded polystyrene goes under the screed, on top of the waterproofing. The build-up for a loggia is described on the page about balcony insulation.

Insulation in a lived-in apartment, without a major renovation

Soundproofing and thermal insulation can be done one room at a time while the rest of the apartment carries on as normal. Soundproofing the wall by the bed or the bedroom ceiling takes us one and a half to two weeks, and insulating a corner room with its reveals two to three. We strip finishes only from the walls we are covering.

Bathroom waterproofing doesn't work like that. A new layer isn't laid over old tiles: nobody knows what is underneath, and there is no way to check without taking them off. That is why a leaking bathroom almost always turns into a bathroom renovation with new tiling rather than a separate job.

For a cold wall there is a middle option. If the damp collects in one corner, we insulate only that corner and the strip of wall beside the window, and leave internal insulation of the outside walls as a whole until the finishes are being replaced anyway.

How much apartment insulation in Batumi costs

The price per m² depends more on the type of insulation than on the area. A two-coat liquid waterproofing membrane costs from 30 ₾ per m²: that is the price for labour, and with our materials it comes to up to 42 ₾. In a 4–6 m² bathroom, waterproofing the whole wet area, meaning the floor, the walls up to 20–30 cm and the shower, costs 750–1,080 ₾.

Soundproofing and thermal insulation cost more because they are a construction of frame, wool and lining, and their prices include materials from the start. Framed wall soundproofing costs 160–215 ₾ per m², and internal insulation of an outside wall 135–180 ₾ per m². For floating screed, balcony waterproofing and mould treatment, see the price table on this page.

Work on a damp base, stripping old finishes and moving sockets off the wall being lined all push the price up. Anything we do at the rough stage, while the walls and floor are open, costs less. The final cost is set after the site measurement and once the estimate is agreed, and the price of each stage is written into the contract.

What to check in the photos before boarding

Insulation is accepted before it is closed up, from the photos in the report or by video call from the site. What to look for:

• waterproofing: tape in every corner and at the joint between floor and walls, collars on the pipes, how high the layer goes up the walls, and the water level after 24 hours;
• wall and ceiling soundproofing: tape under the profiles, a gap between the frame and the wall, wool with no gaps right up to the slab, sockets moved into the lining;
• floating floor: a perimeter strip all the way round and around the pipes, with no mortar run in under it;
• thermal insulation: membrane taped at the joints, at the window and around the back boxes, and a strip of insulation carried onto the ceiling and the adjoining wall.

If a detail isn't visible in a photo, ask for it to be retaken before the wall is closed. The photos stay in the handover file, and if the corner is damp again after a winter, they show where to open up. We put right a mistake in our layer under the warranty.