Earth Heating

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by uninformed

Well you may want to bring your galzing and insulation from europe with you. Double glazing here is double the price and insulation bats are rated at 3.0 not in the 20's and 30's like the USA etc :mad:

---

They use a different R scale in the US as it's all about BTU's per F per square foot. I think.
In metric land (the world outside the US) it's watts per degree C (or K) per square metre. Or is that degrees per watt per m^2. I was using it two weeks ago and already I have it mixed up.

I have never got around to working out a simple conversion factor between the two. But fibreglass batts are pretty much the same the world over. For the same thickness, you'll have much the same insulation value.

Interestingly, even double glazing is terrible for insulation. R value of around 0.15 for single glazing and around 0.26 for double. Decent curtains can double that R rating.
Now how many movies do we see from the US where the main characters are living in unlined brick apartments with no curtains and crappy windows? IME the US and UK aren't that good at insulating their houses, they are just better at heating them.
It's the Scandinavians (as already mentioned) and apparently Koreans who have insulation and building methods nailed for cold climates.

they certainly are set up in scandinavia but australia is starting to head in that direction

The new house standards here are pretty impressive too. The only problem is, takes about a century for new house standards to trickle down to the majority of the people.

The 27 year old house I'm in had no roof insulation when I moved in. Two storey house, vaulted ceiling upstairs. Was a fridge in winter and an oven in summer. On a sunny day with all the windows open it would run about 8C hotter than outside.
20C sunny day, 28C in my office.
32C sunny day, 40C in my office.:(

Over the last year I put R3.2 and R3.6 (started with R3.2, found R3.6 fit better) batts all through 100m^2 of roof. Batten and gib-board over it.
Transformed the house from terrible to quite good. It's still got a lot of bits that could be improved if I could get the bricks off the outside.

This winter we had a week with an average temp of -4.6C. I'd finished the insulation a few weeks earlier.:) I was able to keep overnight lows inside to about 12C when outside hit -10C and get it over 20C inside every day.

that is quite good. i know my uncle in canberra is doing a bit of insulating and blocking up drafts and he has noticed a big difference

I'd say that energy conservation standards as they apply to buildings have improved world wide much the same as the fuel economy of vehicles we drive have improved. Due to lower energy costs some areas may have been slower to take up the improvements. But now with costs as well as a growing awareness for climate change due to greenhouse effects improvements have been taken up in most parts of the world.

I lived in Canada for a short period and it is very apparent that they build for the cold with much better sealing of all habitable spaces, double glazing, insulating the garage from the living spaces where the garage is the bottom floor of multi floor dwellings. The houses did get pretty hot on a few days in summer particularly if you were not home to keep the windows open for ventilation.

that is probably one of the bigger downsides in lots of places in oz is that the temperature/climate changes so much oposed to the colder countries wher eit is cold most of the times but when in sweden it did get abit hot inside and it only got to 27c at the highest. i miss having a ceiling fan while there

Umm guys. Insulation doesn't make your house hotter in summer.

The upstairs in my house used to be about 8 deg hotter than outside on a sunny day with all the windows open.
Now with R3.2 insulation all through the roof it sits at ambient temp in the full sun with the windows open.

Insulation is always better. Hot or cold.

i am not entirely sure on this one but you can get insulation that just keeps inside warm or cold but in australia most people probably have a general one. but generally insulation would always be better.

All insulation does is slow heat transfer. The better your insulation, the slower the heat transfer and the less power it takes to keep one side hotter or colder than the other.

There is no fundamental difference between heating a workshop to 20deg when it's zero outside and keeping a coolstore chilled to zero when it's 20deg outside.

The 100m^2 of R3.2 insulation I've added over the last year, means with a 20C temp difference I am only losing 500w of heat through that 100m^2.
In comparison I'm pretty sure I'm losing 200w through each of the glass single glazed front and back doors.

The whole insulation makes a house too hot in summer thing comes from people thinking it's the same as them wearing too many clothes in summer. But there's a big difference.
With people we are the heat-source and more insulation slows that heat getting out. So we get hotter.
With houses in summer the sun is the heat-source and a better insulated roof slows the heat from that getting in. So it doesn't get as hot.

A great example of this is an insulated shipping container. If you leave them unpowered and shut up, then the temp inside stabilises at the average temperature over about a day. This is usually a lot cooler than the peak day-time temperatures.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by uninformed

Well you may want to bring your galzing and insulation from europe with you. Double glazing here is double the price and insulation bats are rated at 3.0 not in the 20's and 30's like the USA etc :mad:

---

The house's i stayed at in Sweden all had triple glazing with argon gas between the layers. Imagine the cost of that over here!
I was also amazed that even the small pieces of decoration glass on the front door of the BIL's house was triple glazed as well.