Insulation: hot or not?
The other week we had insulation installed in our roof. We chose thermo-sealed batts made almost entirely from recycled materials, with an R3 rating which is suitable for Perth.
Insulating your home is good for the environment because it keeps your home at more manageable temperatures: as you use less electricity or gas to heat/cool your home, you create fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. We currently use a reverse-cycle air-conditioner to heat and cool our house, and before that we used a gas heater in winter, and they’re not cheap to run; we’re not rich, so we thought insulation would be a good way to reduce our bills.
But it really went against the grain to spend our hard-earned money on something we can’t see and will probably forget about within months - it’s the most boring home improvement we’ve made! At least it didn’t cost as much as I thought it would.
Some tips for insulating your home:
- Find out what sort of insulation is best for your home: this will depend on what kind of weather you get, how your home is built, and so on. A good resource for this is the Your Home Technical Manual’s section on insulation, which lists the best insulation types for different Australian regions, and how to install it in your new or existing home.
- Choose an insulation that’s made with the least impact on the environment - something made from recyled materials, or that uses less chemicals in its production, would be good.
- Do it soon! We’ve been more comfortable in the cold winter weather since we had the insulation installed, and are wondering why we waited for so long.
The day before we got insulated (July 17) it was 4.5 degrees Celsius outside when we woke up, and 10 degrees Celsius in our bedroom. On Thursday 2nd August, post-insulation, it was 4.6 degrees outside and 16 degrees inside. 6 degrees might not sound like much, but it’s the difference between “Argh! My toes are frozen!” and “Ooh, it’s a bit chilly, let’s have a cuppa”.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
I like that you quantified the difference in temperature - are you tracking how much it saves you in heating/cooling bills too or that just a bit too anal?
August 14th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Once upon a time we had this idea that we were going to track all our bills before we made green improvements, then compare them to our bills afterwards - but it started to seem like hard work
However, I think we’ll be able to go through our bank statements and see an overall change each year when we do our taxes. We lived in this house for a year before making any changes (for several reasons), so hopefully that’ll be enough of a baseline.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Most people don’t realise it, but insulation is very important, and one of the three cheapest things that have the greatest impact on your energy consumption. People talk about solar panels and double glazed windows and stuff, but you get more bang for your buck with ceiling insulation. And unless your house is insulated, you solar panel won’t be much help because you’ll need to use more energy to heat it.
Other cheap things you can do are to seal all the gaps in your doors and windows, including putting strips on your internal doors to bathrooms, toilet and laundry, and to change over to low flow shower heads so that you use less hot water.
After that, electric storage hot water comprise up to a third of your household energy demand, so getting a solar hot water system is a good move, and cheaper than solar panels.
Sorry, I realise you probably know all this, but I thought it might be useful to people reading your blog.
- Good blog btw.
cheers.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Thanks, Phil! Yeah, we figured that even though insulation is pretty boring, there wasn’t much point making other green changes to our house until we’d made sure we weren’t losing heat (or coolness) through the roof. It really lays the groundwork for future improvements, I reckon. Solar hot water, low-flow shower head and a dual-flush toilet are next on our list…
Feel free to add more info in the comments anytime - I’m certainly not an expert, I’m just trying stuff out as I go along