Tips To Insulate Your Home
It sounds unsexy, but it's the greenest thing you can install in any house or apartment to immediately improve its environmental performance . Effective insulation saves on electricity consumption, making a home more comfortable to live in and paying back the initial installation cost within a few short years.
Insulation can be added to existing buildings with varying effectiveness and cost depending on the construction type and where the insulation is being placed.
Ceilings and suspended floors with easy access are relatively simple to insulate post-construction.
It is possible to add insulation to all roof types common in Australia, and even if some effort is required to lift roofing, the benefit is well worth it.
Ceiling fires have increased significantly with the more common use of down-lights that penetrate the ceiling. Care must be taken not to have direct contact with insulation or to have the transformers underneath the insulation. Wherever possible avoid recessed light fittings as these are a major source of heat loss.
Tiled roofs without sarking can have it added easily if the roof is being re-tiled. If the tiles are to remain in place and access is available to the roof space, double sided foil or foil batts can be added between the rafters or trusses, directly under the tile battens. Insulation board can be laid beneath floor finishes if there is no under-floor access.
Walls and skillion roofs are the hardest to insulate post-construction, as the internal or external lining must be removed. A good time to insulate walls is during re-cladding or re-plastering. Specialised products are available to insulate existing walls. Check with your local building information centre. External insulation or (if local building regulations permit) cavity fill are often appropriate solutions for double brick walls. Adding (or retrofitting) insulation to existing buildings provides a major opportunity to increase comfort and reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. An ideal time for doing this is during renovations.Where possible most walls will benefit from added insulation, and it is possible to add insulation to most construction types used in Australia.
The two cavity fill methods previously described (polystyrene balls or
mineral fibres) can be used to insulate these wall types if the lining
or cladding is not being removed. More material may be required, as it
will fill up not only the cavity but the width of the wall frame (Brick
Veneer and Reverse Brick Veneer). Note that the effectiveness of
existing sarking is greatly diminished by replacing the airspace with
fill material. For timber frame walls, insulation is pumped into the
voids between studs and noggings, but this can be labour intensive.
The ideal option, if the scope of the renovation permits, is to remove
the internal plasterboard linings or external cladding and fit
insulation to the stud frame.
Either glasswool batts or
reflective insulation can be retro-fitted to existing wall frames by
either cutting up a roll and fitting the pieces between each wall stud,
or by using a factory prepared product like concertina or multi-cell
foil batts, which are easy to install and expand or fold into place.
Reflective foil-backed plasterboard is also a useful material.
There is usually sufficient depth in a wall frame to add more than one
layer of reflective insulation, including the necessary air gap between
layers. When used for this purpose the foil should not have an
antiglare coating on it. R 2.0 (70mm) or R 2.5 (90mm) bulk
insulation can be fitted between studs. It is important to choose the
correct thickness of insulation to suit the thickness of the cavity. Householders can improve the energy efficiency of most existing and
new homes by weathersealing. Overseas standards and research recognise
that the weather proofing or draught sealing of houses is the most
effective method of achieving direct energy savings, whilst maintaining
healthy indoor air quality. It is estimated that Australian buildings
leak 2-4times as much air as Northern American or European buildings,
suggesting a tremendous opportunity for energy savings in Australia.
In Australia, households produce around 20 per cent of our total annual
greenhouse gas emissions, of which heating and air-conditioning account
for around 38 per cent. Draughts can account for up to 25 per cent of
heat loss from a home.
Read more on the dangers of foil Insulation.
