Six ways to seal your home against heat loss: seal joints, use double-glazed frames, gasket ceiling hatches, insulate without gaps, and add BioPCM. Then generate heat with passive solar, fireplaces, hydronic systems, or heat banks that store warmth in concrete or special bricks and release it over 48 hours.
How do you heat your home in winter? Would you like to know the number one way an energy-efficient home stays warm in winter? Well, it's actually quite simple, but is often undermined by low quality and low attention to detail during construction. The answer is that an energy-efficient home keeps the warm air in and circulating at just the right speed. This is achieved by making sure the following things are done correctly during construction to ensure that your home is well sealed. Number 1, holes in the linings, like plasterboard, and claddings, like WeatherTechs, are properly sealed to prevent air leakage. Number 2, external window and door frames are well sealed to the building frame and ideally are uPVC and double glazed. Number 3, doors and windows are supplied with Number 3, the ceiling hatches are sealed with rubber gaskets and seals to prevent air leakage around them. Number 4, ceiling hatches are integrated sealed units rather than just a piece of plasterboard cut into the timber frame. Number 5, insulation is properly installed without gaps or creases. And number 6, the house may use BioPCM, which helps to retain heat. heat within the home as it's generated. So what about actually generating the heat in the first place? Number 1 is passive solar gain via correct orientation of windows, which allows the sun's radiation into the home, preferably to be cast onto a masonry surface. Number 2, a fireplace. A correctly sized fireplace can do more than just heating your home. It can heat your water and cook your meals. In addition, if you couple a fireplace with an internal air movement system, it can be incredibly efficient to heat your home. Number 3, hydronic heating linked to an electric heat pump and solar power system. And number 4, heat banks linked to an off-peak power tariff and preferably a solar system as well. We have more about each of these items above in the future, but for now we'll discuss the last 2 as they both work in on the principle of using energy to heat a thermal mass. Hydronic heating and heat banks use electricity to heat a mass and then slowly release that Heat over time. Hydronic heating uses the mass of the concrete slab of your home. In Europe, they are considered the norm, and as they become more widely used in Australia, their cost is coming down. Heat banks use the mass of special heat bricks which are heated up using electricity and then dissipate the heat, usually with fan-forced assistance. The beauty of systems like this is that their mass stores the heat generated from the electricity— electrical energy, and then uses it to heat the house. In numbers terms, You could say that you would use electricity to charge or heat the system for 2 to 6 hours and get up to 48 hours worth of heat out of it. This compares to an air conditioner, for example. Once an air conditioner is turned off, there is no residual heating going on. Air doesn't have any thermal mass, so for 2 hours of electricity use, you're only getting a minimal amount of residual heating. Would you like a more detailed look at great ways to efficiently heat your home in winter? Click the link below to download the guide on great ways to efficiently heat your home.
