When Gordon Brown made his announcement of a new £910million package to help homeowners tackle fuel bills and insulate their homes, I yelled at the television, “I’d like to see what you could do with ours!” Our five-bed detached Edwardian villa has been labelled “hard-to-treat” by an insulation adviser from our local council. This is not what we need to hear as the gas meter in the cellar whizzes round ever faster. The house is built of brick and is half-rendered. It has big windows, rooms in the apex of the roof, and a loft access so tiny that my three-year-old daughter Lizzie couldn’t squeeze through it. In other words, it is an insulation nightmare. The major problem, however, is the lack of cavity in our walls (it seems properties built before 1920 are less likely to have cavity walls). This means that we can’t have conventional cavity wall insulation – which typically costs just £250 subsidised with a government, local council or energy company grant, according to the Energy Saving Trust.

The Prime Minister’s measures, unveiled in September, include the offer of a half-price insulation grant for all households in Britain. You can see the logic. Energy bills are rising more than twice as fast in Britain as they are in the rest of Europe, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Gas and electricity prices went up by 29.7 per cent in the past year against the European average of 14 per cent. Price cuts are forecast in the new year, but most people will still want to protect themselves against any future rises.

Consumer Focus, a new consumer-campaigning organisation, estimates that the average annual household fuel (gas and electricity) bill is £1,308. That’s the average. Our family pays £73 a month for gas and £89 for electricity, on a dual-fuel deal with British Gas by direct debit – £1,944 a year.

So something has to be done. Our options for the external walls, says Matt Colmer, of the Energy Saving Trust, are insulating cladding (attaching a cladding material with insulating properties, such as mineral fibre) or re-rendering with an insulating render, and, internally, reboarding the rooms with insulating plasterboard or covering them with a thermal lining.

Our house is already rendered from the first floor, and has external period features such as plaster mouldings. So Colmer recommends extending the render so that the whole house is rendered, rather than cladding, as this would be more in keeping with the existing style and would not obliterate the period features.

Our road runs the gamut of architectural styles from stone-fronted Victorian semis to fully rendered 1930s bungalows. Covering a house with render where all the properties are pristine brick or stucco wouldn’t go down too well with the neighbours. And as the house is not listed, and we don’t live in a conservation area, a full render would not need planning consent.

Installing an external render insulation system costs from about £6,000 (or £3,000 with a grant), says Ian White, of the specialist insulation company E.J.Horrocks (0151-443 6800, www.ejhorrocks.com). This includes budgeting at £75 per sq m for the render, £600-£800 to remove and rehang items such as plasterwork, drainpipes and lights, and the cost of scaffolding, which is about £10 per sq m. For specialist rendering and cladding companies, see the National Insulation Association website, www.nationalinsulationassociation.org.uk.

Internally, Colmer says it is not necessary to have insulating plasterboard on every wall, usually only those with an external side. “Plasterboard is a couple of inches thick, so it can have an effect on the proportions of a small room,” he says. Installing insulating internal plasterboard costs from £42 per sqm (or £21 with a grant) by a specialist company. For the three internal/external walls in our 6.2m by 3.8m sitting room, the largest room in the house, this would be £900 (about £450 with a grant, plus redecorating). But we have 11 rooms and a hallway and landings, so the cost and upheaval would be considerable.

There is also a DIY option, which is cheaper but does not offer such a high degree of insulation. A flexible thermal lining such as Sempatap Thermal, made by Mould Growth Consultants, 020-8337 0731, www.mgcltd.co.uk , is like heavy wallpaper. It is 1cm thick, is applied directly to walls, and can be painted, papered or tiled over. It costs about £17.50 per sq m – our sitting room would cost £375 (about £187 with a grant, plus redecorating) – and is particularly suitable for houses with period features as it can be applied around them.

And the loft? “When there is limited access, the solution is to spray in insulation with a machine,” says Colmer. At about £500 (£250 with a grant) this is comparable in price to standard loft insulation, and widely available.

So what would the full works cost us, after all grants have been included, using the cheapest option in each case? At least £5,000, including exterior rending, Sempatap insulation in every room, and sprayed loft insulation. So it’s either biting the bullet or spending the winter in Florida.

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