As I see it there are three levels of insulation that are relevant here in New Zealand:
1. No or very little insulation. Perhaps a thin layer (less than 10cm) of Pink Batts fibreglass or some sort of blown-in insulation in the ceiling but most likely no underfloor or wall insulation, single pane windows, lots of air gaps in the wooden windows and doors and maybe in the floor as well. This is your typical older New Zealand house which most people are used to, live in and accept as normal. It requires a big source of heat to warm up and to keep warm and even then it will only heat perhaps half of the house. Usually a woodburner or gas heaters ore maybe electric resistance heaters. Once the heater is turned off or the fire goes out, the house gets cold again quickly, within a few hours.
2. Insulated. This would be a house built in the last few years or now. It has insulation in the walls, ceilings and underfloor. It may have single or double glazing. This still needs a large capacity heater but that heater is now capable of heating the whole house and it stays warm for a while after the heating has been turned off. This is probably what we will have once we've insulated our new house.
3. Passivhaus or superinsulated. This is what I aspire to! It's very simple in principle - more insulation, no air leaks, forced heat recovery ventilation. The insulation level is higher than the average new house (at around 20+cm thick for a Passivhaus) which makes it difficult to retrofit this level of insulation to an existing house. Windows are double or triple glazed and moderate in size. A heat recovery ventilation system uses an air-to-air heat exchanger to warm the cold incoming fresh air with the warm outgoing stale air. The payoff is that the house leaks much less heat than the average insulated house and thus only a small heat source is required to keep the whole house comfortable in any weather or climate. Often the people and appliances and sunshine in the house are enough to warm the house and little or no extra heating is required. No need to chop firewood or pay for a big heat pump, no big gas or electricity or firewood costs and no requirement for sunshine to heat the house.
If only every house was built like this!
2009/05/23
Why why why?
We've just bought our first house and want it to be warm and energy efficient within a limited budget. I have lots of clever (or crazy) ideas that I might use on the house if my dear wife will let me and want to share my experiences.
We've just bought a fairly typical three bedroom 1960's weatherboard house in Palmerston North, New Zealand. As with almost all older houses here, this was not built with thermal comfort in mind. About half of the year over summer the temperature is comfortable here without needing heating or cooling to be comfortable and that kind of house is fine at those times but in winter it gets pretty cold. We don't get snow here but it's still pretty miserable to live in an uninsulated house when the temperature is 10 degrees C outside and 12 degrees inside... as it was this morning! I'm still shivering right now. We're still in the old house that we've rented for several years and it's just the same as the new house - a thin inadequate layer of insulation in the roof, none in the walls or under the floor, lots of gaps in the windows and doors for air to blow through, single pane glass windows, no consideration to passive solar heating (at least the living room in both houses faces north into the sun - I wouldn't have bought it otherwise). So any heat that is in the house escapes very quickly and currently we only have a rather useless wood fire and two oil column heaters that I've put in the kids rooms overnight. That's why the living room gets freezing cold overnight and frankly, we're sick of it. We get quite a few colds every year, my wife has asthma and just psychologically you get miserable in the cold.
Now that we own our own house we can renovate it achieve the levels of thermal comfort that we want. We'll retrofit insulation into the house as best we can and install efficient heating. Then there are my more unconventional ideas - hopefully I can put in some heat recovery ventilation as well and I have these crazy thoughts about a home automation system...
Hopefully it will be an interesting journey for us and be useful for you as well.
Benjamin
We've just bought a fairly typical three bedroom 1960's weatherboard house in Palmerston North, New Zealand. As with almost all older houses here, this was not built with thermal comfort in mind. About half of the year over summer the temperature is comfortable here without needing heating or cooling to be comfortable and that kind of house is fine at those times but in winter it gets pretty cold. We don't get snow here but it's still pretty miserable to live in an uninsulated house when the temperature is 10 degrees C outside and 12 degrees inside... as it was this morning! I'm still shivering right now. We're still in the old house that we've rented for several years and it's just the same as the new house - a thin inadequate layer of insulation in the roof, none in the walls or under the floor, lots of gaps in the windows and doors for air to blow through, single pane glass windows, no consideration to passive solar heating (at least the living room in both houses faces north into the sun - I wouldn't have bought it otherwise). So any heat that is in the house escapes very quickly and currently we only have a rather useless wood fire and two oil column heaters that I've put in the kids rooms overnight. That's why the living room gets freezing cold overnight and frankly, we're sick of it. We get quite a few colds every year, my wife has asthma and just psychologically you get miserable in the cold.
Now that we own our own house we can renovate it achieve the levels of thermal comfort that we want. We'll retrofit insulation into the house as best we can and install efficient heating. Then there are my more unconventional ideas - hopefully I can put in some heat recovery ventilation as well and I have these crazy thoughts about a home automation system...
Hopefully it will be an interesting journey for us and be useful for you as well.
Benjamin
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