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Insulate Britain

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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 23 Sep 2021, 09:15

novocaine wrote:worst case is 20GJ of energy input per tonne of insulation (5555kwh). DECC research suggests a saving of 400kwh/y for loft insulation so 13-15 years pay back if you have have a big house. but that's per house so we need to look at how many houses can be insulated per tonne of material (I'm ignoring energy for shipping etc.), so a 10x10m loft requires 189kg of insulation for 270mm, so 5 homes per ton on average, so pay back is 3 years.


Three years using the worst-case figures. One third of that using the best case figures. A one year energy payback period is, I say again, trivial. No matter what the suggested replacement period is, the actuality is that people aren't replacing their loft insulation every 10 years. Even if they were, investing 1 joule of energy to save 10 is a decent return, but if the reality is two, three, five times that then it really isn't even a conversation worth having.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby novocaine » 23 Sep 2021, 09:28

3 years using best case figures not worst case and ignoring a vast swath of ancillary energy associated with the process. Trivial isn't the right word.

although we do seem to be arguing the same side of the coin here Mike.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 23 Sep 2021, 10:22

This is now getting interesting.
Regarding the paybacks, using loft insulation as an example I fully accept that the payback is measured in relatively few years, but a year is actually less than six months as that’s when I use energy to warm my house.
The warmer months the insulation is doing nothing for my energy bill.
So….. do figures take this into account?
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby droogs » 23 Sep 2021, 10:42

Lurker wrote:This is now getting interesting.
Regarding the paybacks, using loft insulation as an example I fully accept that the payback is measured in relatively few years, but a year is actually less than six months as that’s when I use energy to warm my house.
The warmer months the insulation is doing nothing for my energy bill.
So….. do figures take this into account?


Technically not quite right as the insulation will help prevent the house getting hotter and therefore lower consumption by not having a fan or AC on as much. Insulation works both ways
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Woodster » 23 Sep 2021, 10:50

I realise that it reduces room sizes slightly but I’ve often wondered how well insulated plaster board works? The stuff I saw had about 25mm of polystyrene foam on the back?
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 23 Sep 2021, 12:44

droogs wrote:
Lurker wrote:This is now getting interesting.
Regarding the paybacks, using loft insulation as an example I fully accept that the payback is measured in relatively few years, but a year is actually less than six months as that’s when I use energy to warm my house.
The warmer months the insulation is doing nothing for my energy bill.
So….. do figures take this into account?


Technically not quite right as the insulation will help prevent the house getting hotter and therefore lower consumption by not having a fan or AC on as much. Insulation works both ways


Yeh I understand that, but I have no need for either.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 23 Sep 2021, 13:31

Woodster wrote:I realise that it reduces room sizes slightly but I’ve often wondered how well insulated plaster board works? The stuff I saw had about 25mm of polystyrene foam on the back?


It's impossible to look at this in isolation. It entirely depends on the build-up of the wall. Sometimes, where an insulation is in the wall is more important than what it is or even how thick it is. What can be said, however, is that it being attached to plasterboard is only for convenience, rather than for energy efficiency or improved performance. You would get precisely the same result by fixing 25mm of the same insulation to the wall, and covering it with plasterboard, assuming you could fix everything without gaps. I'm not a great believer in polystyrene, BTW, because it can be an issue in a fire (I know there are various types).
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby AJB Temple » 23 Sep 2021, 14:45

Also worth noting that plasterboard with insulation attached is amazingly expensive - much more when I last costed it, this year, than buying the board and insulation separately. Maybe it saves some construction time on big builds, but for DIY it makes little sense to use it.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby novocaine » 24 Sep 2021, 08:50

apparently our discussions are being monitored. :o

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58667328
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby wallace » 24 Sep 2021, 08:59

I converted my loft into a hobby room and insulated the roof and floor. This had a big impact on the warmth of the house. My house is the last to loose its snow covering in the winter. I also insulated the cavity. The problem I have now is during warm periods my wife puts the heating on. I keep saying open a window to let some heat in.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 24 Sep 2021, 09:08

novocaine wrote:apparently our discussions are being monitored. :o

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58667328


The on going cause is the way vat is applied.

I used to live in the far north of Scotland. Everywhere there were really nice but ramshackle stone houses with a fair amount of land going for a song. People bought the plot and put a new build on it.
I couldn’t understand why, until it was explained to me that the new build was vat free but to do up the more visually attractive building would incur vat.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Phil » 24 Sep 2021, 10:48

Just a comment on some insulation from way down South ….

Our first house we purchased in 1975 was about 25 years old.

First action was to take down the chimney, seal it off in the roof, fireplaces are messy and that elusive ‘someone’ has to clean it. The fireplace was also in the dining room, not very practical.

Next was to insulate the ceiling. I used 50mm Think-Pink fibre glass insulation. What a difference it made to the temperature inside the house. Just so much cooler in the summer heat and warmer when we went into the first winter. We are not great fans of heaters.

In May 1981 we moved into our second house which we designed and had built. When winter arrived it was the ideal time to insulate as the roof cavity was a lot cooler. Again 50mm Think-Pink as that what was on offer.

After doing the first house I was more geared up for this one.
Laid some nice thick pine planking across the rafters end to end. The roof had 2 pitches and even the low side was high enough to stand upright.
A wide crawling board with batons so that it could slide between the rafters. Made crawling to the low edges easy.
The same effect of cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
The ‘insulation boy’ was then asked to do the parents house. What could I say, of course, just stock up the beer supply.

Move on to 2014 when we signed off the plans for our new house in the retirement estate.

By now the Gov had woken up to energy saving and energy efficient houses.

The ceiling has 100mm green stuff (don’t think its fibreglass) and the ceiling itself is Rhino Plasterboard.
The water pipes are all insulated and the geyser should have a blanket.

We have SABS SANS 204:2011 as the set standard
There is a heat pump for hot water to the geyser, the element is switched off and will only be used if the pump fails. The building choice was heat pump or solar panel geyser which has a small circulating pump.
The hot water pipes in the roof are connected in a ‘ring’ to supposedly supply the best hot water flow.

In the design we were allowed to change a number of items except the outside walls on foundation. It is a raft foundation.

So we decided to remove the 3 bedroom windows and replace with nice big sliding doors to bring lots of light into the house.

In the living room we also removed the West and North windows and replaced with large stacking doors, again to bring more light into the house.

Now as part of SABS SANS 204-m the m2 of the windows area is measured against the total floor area including the garage. If it exceeds 15% which in our case worked out to 20.75%, then special glass needs to be fitted (costly exercise but worth it).
The glass is called Low-E and is treated with a chemical which reflects the heat out and retains the heat in. Fantastic idea. (see the gripe later on!)
To this we also had sun-shield film installed on the sliding and stacking doors for more heat protection and UV minimisation. Also provides some privacy, not easy to see into the rooms.

All this expensive glass is installed in bronze aluminium frames, the standard set for the estate.
Really looks great when new and then starts fading.

BUT! The gripe ……………………..

In summer the aluminium frame gets so hot you can’t even touch it and all that heat goes straight into the house negating any benefits of the insulation and Low-E!
In winter just the opposite - the frame gets as cold as the outside temperature (this last winter we had had lots of 4c days) so again negating a lots of the so-called energy benefits.

Conclusion - the people who compile these standards, great idea, probably only deal with laboratory conditions .
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby RogerM » 24 Sep 2021, 12:00

Phil wrote:BUT! The gripe ……………………..
In summer the aluminium frame gets so hot you can’t even touch it and all that heat goes straight into the house negating any benefits of the insulation and Low-E!
In winter just the opposite - the frame gets as cold as the outside temperature (this last winter we had had lots of 4c days) so again negating a lots of the so-called energy benefits.


Phil - I'm really surprised that there isn't an effective thermal break in the frames, because as you say, heat will flow downhill in either direction. Do you have a condensation problem on the internal frames on a cold day too?

I remember our first house in 1978 was an old red sandstone cottage near Penrith with absolutely zero insulation in the loft. We got a grant to insulate it with 4^ of fibreglass. I started out working in the loft on a bitterly cold day in my shirtsleeves, and by the time I'd finished I had to put on a thick sweater, the difference was so marked. The ceiling under the flat roof bedroom extension above the garage was inaccessible, and clearly lacked insulation of any type, but luckily we were newlyweds so keeping warm wasn't a problem :lol: .
Last edited by RogerM on 24 Sep 2021, 13:03, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 24 Sep 2021, 12:56

Last time I was in SA it was barely possible to get double glazing, and virtually no-one had it. My house here is triple glazed, with timber window frames. The level of insulation, too, is in stark contrast to yours. New builds here will have at least 250mm of fibreglass in the loft, and if they have a large window area then this will be bumped up to well over 300.I've got 500mm in mine......and the equivalent of 300mm in my walls, compared with the normal 100mm. SA has such high levels of sunlight (never mind the temperature), that it would be child's play to design houses that had no heating or cooling requirements. I say again....no need for heating or air conditioning. I've pulled my hair out trying to persuade people in your wonderful country that this is not only easily (and cheaply) attainable, but also a target worth aiming at.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby RogerM » 24 Sep 2021, 13:05

RogerM wrote:
Phil wrote:BUT! The gripe ……………………..
In summer the aluminium frame gets so hot you can’t even touch it and all that heat goes straight into the house negating any benefits of the insulation and Low-E!
In winter just the opposite - the frame gets as cold as the outside temperature (this last winter we had had lots of 4c days) so again negating a lots of the so-called energy benefits.


Phil - I'm really surprised that there isn't an effective thermal break in the frames, because as you say, heat will flow downhill in either direction. Do you have a condensation problem on the internal frames on a cold day too?

I remember our first house in 1978 was an old red sandstone cottage near Penrith with absolutely zero insulation in the loft. We got a grant to insulate it with 4^ of fibreglass. I started out working in the loft on a bitterly cold day in my shirtsleeves, and by the time I'd finished I had to put on a thick sweater, the difference was so marked. The ceiling under the flat roof bedroom extension above the garage was inaccessible, and clearly lacked insulation of any type above the ceiling or in the floor separating us from the garage below, but luckily we were newlyweds so keeping warm wasn't a problem :lol: .
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Phil » 24 Sep 2021, 13:47

RogerM wrote:
Phil wrote:BUT! The gripe ……………………..
In summer the aluminium frame gets so hot you can’t even touch it and all that heat goes straight into the house negating any benefits of the insulation and Low-E!
In winter just the opposite - the frame gets as cold as the outside temperature (this last winter we had had lots of 4c days) so again negating a lots of the so-called energy benefits.


Phil - I'm really surprised that there isn't an effective thermal break in the frames, because as you say, heat will flow downhill in either direction. Do you have a condensation problem on the internal frames on a cold day too?

I remember our first house in 1978 was an old red sandstone cottage near Penrith with absolutely zero insulation in the loft. We got a grant to insulate it with 4^ of fibreglass. I started out working in the loft on a bitterly cold day in my shirtsleeves, and by the time I'd finished I had to put on a thick sweater, the difference was so marked. The ceiling under the flat roof bedroom extension above the garage was inaccessible, and clearly lacked insulation of any type, but luckily we were newlyweds so keeping warm wasn't a problem :lol: .


Roger I am sitting in the North bedroom which is ideal in winter (warm) and summer (cool). But there are the couple of months where the sun is moving that makes this room very hot :o

At the moment I am sitting bare feet and just a pair of shorts.
If I feel the sliding door frame in the middle is so hot that I struggle to keep my hand on it. It burns.
Where we live the temps are:
Winter 0c to 21c This past winter was the coldest in the 6 years we have been living here. Very heavy white frost and also black frost which does more damage than the white. Looks like we have lost our one tree to the cold.
Even the garage/workshop is ok in winter to work (North facing aluminium door)
Summer 14c to 40c
The bathroom is the coolest place in summer and I have debated on chucking a mattress on the floor and sleeping there :lol:

The only time we have condensation is in the bathrooms when we shower in winter, but then we also open the window and it quickly disappears.

Thermal breaks - people here would think you are swearing! :lol:


Mike G wrote:Last time I was in SA it was barely possible to get double glazing, and virtually no-one had it. My house here is triple glazed, with timber window frames. The level of insulation, too, is in stark contrast to yours. New builds here will have at least 250mm of fibreglass in the loft, and if they have a large window area then this will be bumped up to well over 300.I've got 500mm in mine......and the equivalent of 300mm in my walls, compared with the normal 100mm. SA has such high levels of sunlight (never mind the temperature), that it would be child's play to design houses that had no heating or cooling requirements. I say again....no need for heating or air conditioning. I've pulled my hair out trying to persuade people in your wonderful country that this is not only easily (and cheaply) attainable, but also a target worth aiming at.


Mike agree with you.
That is why this Low-E should be ideal.
We have ceramic tiles right through except the 3 bedrooms with carpets. The tiles should retain the heat better in winter and are cooler in summer.
I am considering installing some of those 1000mm clear awnings over the large doors.

Unfortunately we decided on the stacking doors on the West living room, which bakes in the sun. It leads to our patio which we don't use because you would die of heat stroke. (this was decided when we signed off the plans not realising the heat factor.)
Other houses have installed aluminium awnings ALA over their patios which is all very well but it makes the rooms so much darker and a lot less winter sun. I cant handle dark rooms. (think old house with huge ALA)
At this point it needs to be noted that the wife is still wearing a track-top. She is the one who gets cold and the reason we moved to this place which is right next to the entrance to hell or some hidden volcano.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 24 Sep 2021, 14:27

Phil, we have Low E with double and triple glazing. Add in inert gases such as Argon or Xenon in the gaps between the glass, and we can achieve centre pane U values of better than 0.9. That means that so little heat escapes through the glass that the windows get condensation on the outside when it's cold.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Phil Pascoe » 24 Sep 2021, 16:37

Times change. I remember going to bed in my grandmothers cottage, one of seven, in the middle of a row.
Wooden ceilings, no insulation whatsoever, listening to the rats running up and down the row to the animal feed store at the end.

My mother had a very nice house built (£90,000, she owned the land) in 1978. She had iroko windows made and her architect advised her not to have double glazing as it would never justify the cost difference.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Lurker » 24 Sep 2021, 20:15

You knew when it was winter because there was ice on the inside of the bedroom window when you woke up.
Kids today have probuably never seen those beautiful patterns.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby wallace » 25 Sep 2021, 08:46

I only bought my place 20 years ago, it still had metal framed single glazed windows, no central heating and a coal back boiler for hot water. It had never been modernised since being built in 1950. There was 3 open fires. Before going to work at 5 I would light a fire so it wasnt too chilly for my wife and daughter when they got up. Nothing better than having an open fire in the bedroom.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Mike G » 25 Sep 2021, 10:33

wallace wrote:........Nothing better than having an open fire in the bedroom.


:D Nothing better than not needing one......
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby AJB Temple » 25 Sep 2021, 11:39

We used to have an open fire in our farmhouse at the time eldest offspring emerged. Didn't need it for heat, but a large inglenook fire in winter is very romantic.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Phil Pascoe » 25 Sep 2021, 12:06

I found a booklet about the history of my infant/junior school published in 1965 (strangely, the year I left).
One chapter described a school day in about 1920 - the first job of the caretaker in the morning was to light the twenty two stoves. :shock:
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby Raymedullary » 25 Sep 2021, 12:59

Even though we are "over insulated" by a long way we simply get the home made woolly jumpers out that were made from the wool of our own sheep from our small holding which is most satisfying.
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Re: Insulate Britain

Postby wallace » 26 Sep 2021, 08:47

Mike G wrote:
wallace wrote:........Nothing better than having an open fire in the bedroom.


:D Nothing better than not needing one......


I was young so it cold didn't bother me, at one point I ran some radiators off the hot cylinder for my daughters room and the bathroom. We only got proper combi heating about 10 years ago. The flues are all stuffed with bubble wrap to stop the heat being sucked out. We light one at christmas so it looks nice.
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