I am currently writing a thesis on cavity wall insulation. Has anyone on here done any monitoring of the environment within a cavity over a period of time, or know of any such research. I'm looking for temperature and relative humidity levels over a year or more. My main study is the material performance of urea formaldehyde CWI which has been proven to shrink and possibly break down under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity.

Any help, or pointers would be great.

Paul.

Hi Mike, no it's not but there are possibly a few million houses that were insulated in the 70's and 80's that have very degraded insulation. I'm trying to determine if this actually a possibility and what we can do about it.

Paul.

filled or unfilled cavities?

I don't know of any detailed survey but imagine you could find whatever you wanted.
i.e. you will find the odd case of broken-roof/driving-rain filling cavity with water. Every one I have ever seen looked bone dry and the urea formaldehyde I found at our old house still seemed ok (very delicate through).

In an unfilled cavity with everything working well it is fairly symetrical situation so the temperature at the centre of the cavity will be a trailing moving average of the inside and outside temperatures. In normal situations ditto for the absolute water concentrations.