Why so cold???

J

Jayro

Just after some advice. Our PPOR is a weatherboard home on peers. I guess about 1.4m peers. Our home is freezing cold every autumn/winter. To the extent that your face feels cold, the air is just cold. Then we pop around to my parents place around the corner, nice home on a slab (as our previous place was) and its just nice and comfy.

Anyhow just wondering is there such thing as underfloor insulation? Seems we get alot of cold air coming up through the floors. Ceilings are insulated so thats not the prob. Heating bills cost a fortune as im not able to keep the warmth in.

Appreciate any advice or views.

Cheers Jas!
 
Jayro

I remember 1 of my IP's had wooden floor and you could actually see through the cracks in the floor so that house was very cold in winter.
I'm guessing that your house floor would be similar.

I haven't heard of insulation for floors but there are rolls of insulation @ Bunnings with 1.5R rating and you could run and staple this insulation underneath the floor.

I don't know how easy this will be and how much warmer your house will get but if you have good access underneath the house and manage to do it,
it will help. Additionaly wall to wall rugs will also help.

With weatherboard & fibro homes there could be many undiscovered gaps and cracks in the walls, around windows and doors etc. Find all gaps and close them.
On a windy day light up a candle and walk around the house looking for air movement. That's where I'd start and then tackle each gap as I find them.

With exterior doors, you can generally stick a weather shield around the door jamb and there are some rubber strips you can attach to the bottom of the door.

However, I found that those rubber strips are troublesome and not very affective so I usually glue a flat piece of 10mm wood to the floor between the front door and the security screen and that sits hard against the door and stops the creepy crawlies and the wind from going through.

Good luck
 
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The answer is straightforward. The earth is the great temperature moderator. If you were to build your house with the floor a metre below ground level it would be even more snug than your parent's. Using tiles rather than carpets will improve this moderation effect even though that seems counter-intuitive because they are cold a'foot.

Your roof needs to be insulated to protect you from egress of the sun's heat during the day. The fact that your house can lose heat via the floor means that such high homes are good in the tropics and anywhere the sun is blazing down. But at night your house STILL loses heat via the floor and uninsulated walls. This is a bummer in cold winters.

Carpets, cork tiles, moving! These are things you must consider.
 
and so many people tell me "they don't build 'em like they used to"
but as BV says, insulate the floor , try the walls and stop every draft that comes through the home, if your having trouble with achiving this use a lit candle to find the draughts,
 
thermal mass by way of concrete slab on the ground, is one of the key attributes of thermally efficient houses... more so than the construction material of the walls. So I have been told anyway
 
Jayro

The same insulation (batts) can be used for the floor as for the ceiling, all you need to do is spend some time and staple string to underside of the floor joists at intervals close enough to support the batts and then fit the batts, it is quite simple to do and it works quite well!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other option I have seen is, as I know you are a a/c tech/fridgey, although I would not do this myself, is actually spray on the insulation foam they use on supply air boxes, return air plenums, BTO's etc.

Regards

Big Tone
 
Why so cold?

Don't you know??

Global warming. :eek:

Seriously, much of the heat from the house goes out through the windows, and doors if they are glass.

There can also be lots of air leaks around door frames. Rubber seals on the door frames will help.

So, lash out shizen loads and replace the windows with double-glazed, and cover all the floors with carpets if they aren't already.

I would get the floors sealed first somehow if there are gaps in the boards.
 
BayView said:
Why so cold?

Don't you know??

Global warming. :eek:

Seriously, much of the heat from the house goes out through the windows, and doors if they are glass.

There can also be lots of air leaks around door frames. Rubber seals on the door frames will help.

So, lash out shizen loads and replace the windows with double-glazed, and cover all the floors with carpets if they aren't already.

I would get the floors sealed first somehow if there are gaps in the boards.
Click to expand...


You can quite easily fix the heat loss through the windows with blinds,curtains, and pelmets, should be cheaper than replacing all the windows with double glazed!
 
older homes shrink, the older timbers are/were sap wood and reduce their sise by up to 20% ie so if the original bearers were 100mm and the joists also being 100mm then the total shrinkege rate could be up to 40mm.
I have see this amount of movement in floors in the old dbl brick homes in sydney, and can be measured as the archetreive has a 20<40mm gap under them.
fot batts to the underside using staples and blue packing tape, insulate the wall cavities , but i can't see how the companys do it properly.
and seal other gaps with the expanding foams etc. can get those old houses realy warm , but you just have to follow through on this tupe of stuff.
 
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I've lived in a wooden floor house with gaps on stumps. Bloody freezing...constant updraft of cold air from underneath...nice in summer, bloody ridiculous in winter....:mad:
 
I have heard that there is a concertina-style foiled sheet available that's good to use for under timber floors. It folds out like a big fan. It's not that expensive but the trick is to not pull it out too flat. Like all insulation it's the pockets of air that are the key.
 
Similar house here, winters can be minus 7, summer 47c.

For the cold months we have a rinnae convector gas heater in the kitchen, huge old house, big kitchen, high ceilings and c-c-c-coldish.:)

The convector heater is fantastic, best buy we ever made, go through a few bottles of gas over winter but that's the price we pay for living in utopia..


We are up at 0530hrs and off working horses, so when it all gets relative, the house is quite the haven.;)

Thermal underwear and balaclavas/gloves handy.

The sun when it rises, does shine into the kitchen's big glass window too, so that is nice.

Nothing like being so close to nature and the elements. It's...it's.......stimulating.:D and we find we cuddle more in winter.
 
I have heard that there is a concertina-style foiled sheet available that's good to use for under timber floors. It folds out like a big fan. It's not that expensive but the trick is to not pull it out too flat. Like all insulation it's the pockets of air that are the key.
Click to expand...

Yep, I've heard these are good. Easy to install, too - especially if you're crawling around on your back.
 
Thanks all for the replies. I was thinking of getting some gas heating. Also anyone know where I can get this "concertina-style foiled sheet" or any website or any other info on it. Very interested.

As handyandy mentioned, house is great in summer, not so great in winter.

Cheers Jas!
 
underfloor insulator

An underfloor system may not be suitable for every home. For one thing, it usually costs more than a concrete slab. There may also be too many obstructions. Another problem with underfloor systems is heat transfer. Not only is plywood a better insulator than concrete, but the aluminum fins only touch about half the tubing surface. This makes heat transfer less efficient than with a slab.
 
Jayro said:
Just after some advice. Our PPOR is a weatherboard home on peers. I guess about 1.4m peers. Our home is freezing cold every autumn/winter. To the extent that your face feels cold, the air is just cold. Then we pop around to my parents place around the corner, nice home on a slab (as our previous place was) and its just nice and comfy.

Anyhow just wondering is there such thing as underfloor insulation? Seems we get alot of cold air coming up through the floors. Ceilings are insulated so thats not the prob. Heating bills cost a fortune as im not able to keep the warmth in.

Appreciate any advice or views.

Cheers Jas!
Click to expand...

I was in Bunnings yesterday and I noticed they were selling under floor insulation for floor boards. It consisted of polystrene slabs that go in between the floor joists.
 
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