Loft insulation

[watervole]

Walking down the street today, I noticed that ours was the only house with frost
still on the roof. The reason is simple, we have loft insulation both on the
floor of the loft and also inside the rafters. It makes an enormous difference
and wasn't even that expensive to do. People tend to go for the expensive
visible things like double-glazing and fail to realise how much money goes
straight through the roof. If you've only got a thin layer (3 or 4 inches) of
loft insulation, then you could almost certainly make the house warmer by adding
extra.

I also find I gain a lot by passive solar heating. When it's cold, like today,
I open the curtains on the sunny side of the house and close them on the other.
That can warm rooms up very nicely, esepcially if I close the curtains the
minute the sun goes down. It's free heat.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

Unfortunately over here, I tend to have the opposite problem: in summer, trying to keep the heat out. The downside of insulation is that, though it keeps the heat out on the first day or two of the above-thirty-degree-heat, by the third day, the house is warm, and when it's dropped back down to twenty, the house it still warm. The pattern in Melbourne summers is 2-4 days of very hot weather (30-40 degrees celcius) and then 1-3 days of cool-warm weather (twenties, or sometimes a few degrees lower). When the hot spells get longer than two days it starts becoming an endurance test, and I resort to sticking my head in the shower to get my hair all wet so that it can drip on me until it dries -- or in the worst case, walking into the shower fully clothed.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

It seems to work much better here because even in high Summer the temperature plunges below 10C overnight.

New houses are built to take advantage of the sun with eaves that block it in Summer and let the Sun fall on the windows in winter.

[kerravonsen]

(Hmm, interesting icon...)

It seems to work much better here because even in high Summer the temperature plunges below 10C overnight.

Wheras here, you do get those horrible nights when it only gets down to the low twenties overnight, but fortunately those don't happen too often, but even so, it certainly wouldn't get below ten overnight unless it had already been a cool day. Contrawise, though, we don't get 40-degree days as often as you do in Canberra, I think.

At least my house is oriented well; north-facing windows and no west windows at all.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Yes, good advice. We have loft insulation, but it's oldish, I'll go and check on its efficiency by inspecting our frost cover.