Save energy, protect the environment, live healthily

Sav­ing energy is the order of the day: The sharp rise in prices for oil, gas and oth­er resources is put­ting a heavy strain on house­hold budgets. In addi­tion, the con­sump­tion of energy is a high bur­den on the envir­on­ment. The insu­la­tion of build­ings is there­fore an import­ant step towards high­er energy effi­ciency. For new build­ings, this is reg­u­lated: they need to com­ply with the strict cri­ter­ia of the Ger­man Energy Act for Build­ings (GEG). For exist­ing build­ings, how­ever, there is an enorm­ous sav­ing poten­tial: many houses have a poor energy per­form­ance and are often equipped with out­dated heat­ing sys­tems.

Energy-sav­ing tip 1: Home insu­la­tion with cer­ti­fied products

For the reas­ons above, the (sub­sequent) insu­la­tion of build­ings is cur­rently at a premi­um. Espe­cially thermal insu­la­tion com­pos­ite sys­tems (ETICS), wheth­er based on wood fibers, min­er­al wool or rigid foam, are in high demand. The refur­bish­ment is all the more effi­cient if the insu­la­tion of walls is accom­pan­ied by the replace­ment of old win­dows with new ones. When insu­lat­ing a build­ing, it is of key import­ance to use only mater­i­als that are both ener­get­ic­ally effi­cient and at the same time harm­less to health. Today, many insu­la­tion mater­i­als have been awar­ded the Blue Angel eco label or the RAL qual­ity mark. But the range of products used for home insu­la­tion and win­dow replace­ment also com­prises oth­er products such as joint seal­ants, com­pressed seal­ing tapes, joint seal­ing strips as well as boards and mem­branes used for decoup­ling and renov­at­ing sub­strates. These access­ory products should also be care­fully selec­ted. The best option are products that carry the EMICODE^® label and thus guar­an­tee the low­est pos­sible emis­sions. Par­tic­u­larly with regard to volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs), which are haz­ard­ous to human health, the EMICODE^® label assures that the emis­sions stay sig­ni­fic­antly below the required EU lim­its. After ini­tial test­ing and clas­si­fic­a­tion, the products are sub­mit­ted to reg­u­lar spot checks through inde­pend­ent labor­at­or­ies to ensure they provide long-term safety from indoor air pol­lu­tion. The EMICODE^® is awar­ded by the Düs­sel­­dorf-based GEV (Asso­ci­ation for the Con­trol of Emis­sions in Products for Floor­ing Install­a­tion, Adhes­ives and Build­ing Mater­i­als).

Energy-sav­ing tip 2: Home vent­il­a­tion with heat recov­ery

If expertly insu­lated, mod­ern build­ing envel­opes are windtight. For this reas­on, the use of envir­on­ment­ally and health-friendly products is essen­tial for indoor air qual­ity. In keep­ing with the motto: After the insu­la­tion is before the vent­il­a­tion concept. Prop­er vent­il­a­tion makes sure there is a com­plete exchange of air sev­er­al times a day. Only then will the air inside the rooms always con­tain a suf­fi­cient amount of oxy­gen. This is healthy and pro­motes your con­cen­tra­tion, for example when work­ing from your home office. Adequate vent­il­a­tion also con­trols the amount of humid­ity in the rooms. Excess­ive humid­ity will even­tu­ally res­ult in harm­ful mold growth. Mold can also devel­op when the insu­la­tion was improp­erly installed, thus caus­ing the form­a­tion of thermal bridges. In these places, the moist room air cools down, con­dens­a­tion forms and, after a while, mold will begin to grow.

The air exchange can be achieved manu­ally or via a vent­il­a­tion sys­tem. Manu­al vent­il­a­tion requires a cer­tain amount of dis­cip­line. More reli­able are cent­ral vent­il­a­tion sys­tems. They draw in fresh air from the out­side and fil­ter it before emit­ting it into the rooms. At the same time, they extract stale air with high humid­ity, espe­cially from bath­rooms and kit­chens, to the out­side. Thanks to built-in air fil­ters, no pol­lut­ants are allowed to enter the rooms. The air exchange rate can be indi­vidu­ally adjus­ted for these sys­tems. The key bene­fit of con­trolled vent­il­a­tion is that the built-in heat exchanger recov­ers 80 to 90 per­cent of the heat usu­ally lost from the extrac­ted air and passes it on to the sup­ply air. This min­im­izes heat losses and saves a lot of energy. How­ever, the fil­ter sys­tem must be main­tained at reg­u­lar inter­vals to pre­vent the spread of patho­gens.