Tips for home insulation, ventilation and energy saving

Even though energy con­ser­va­tion and improv­ing the energy effi­ciency of one’s home are top pri­or­it­ies for many people, care should be taken to ensure a healthy liv­ing envir­on­ment. The right choice of products and suf­fi­cient vent­il­a­tion will help.

Tip 1: Watch out for harmless building materials

These days, extern­al thermal insu­la­tion com­pos­ite sys­tems (ETICS), wheth­er based on wood fibers, min­er­al wool or rigid foam, are in high demand – both for new-builds and for refur­bish­ments. When refur­bish­ing your home, it is advis­able to not only insu­late the walls but at the same time replace the old win­dows with new ones. For this pur­pose, make sure to use only products that are both ener­get­ic­ally effi­cient and at the same time harm­less to health. We recom­mend choos­ing insu­la­tion mater­i­als that have been awar­ded the Blue Angel eco label or the RAL qual­ity mark. Also access­ory products should be care­fully selec­ted. These include, for instance, joint seal­ants, com­pressed seal­ing tapes, joint seal­ing strips as well as boards and mem­branes used for decoup­ling and for sub­strate repair. It is best to opt for products that carry the EMICODE^® label and thus guar­an­tee the low­est pos­sible emis­sions, espe­cially with regard to volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs), which are harm­ful to human health.

Tip 2: Provide adequate ventilation

If prop­erly insu­lated, mod­ern build­ing envel­opes are windtight. For this reas­on, the res­id­ents need to ensure that there is a com­plete exchange of air sev­er­al times a day so that the air inside the rooms always con­tains a suf­fi­cient amount of oxy­gen. This is healthy and pro­motes con­cen­tra­tion, for example when work­ing from home. Adequate vent­il­a­tion also ensures that there is no increased humid­ity in the rooms, which would even­tu­ally res­ult in harm­ful mold growth. The exchange of air can be achieved by manu­al vent­il­a­tion or via a vent­il­a­tion sys­tem. Cent­ral vent­il­a­tion sys­tems are more reli­able than manu­al vent­il­a­tion. They draw in fresh air from the out­side and fil­ter it before releas­ing it to the inside. At the same time, stale air with high humid­ity is extrac­ted from inside the rooms, espe­cially from bath­rooms and kit­chens, and trans­por­ted to the out­side. Advant­age: A heat exchanger recov­ers 80 to 90 per­cent of the heat from the exhaust air and passes it on to the sup­ply air. This min­im­izes the usu­al heat losses and saves a lot of energy. Please note: The fil­ter sys­tems require reg­u­lar main­ten­ance in order to pre­vent the spread of vir­uses, bac­teria and fungi.