Wrap up your house and save money

In winter, you’d bet­ter wrap your­self up well to avoid catch­ing the flu. But also build­ing own­ers should “wrap up” their houses if they want to avoid energy losses. After all, build­ings account for a large por­tion of total energy con­sump­tion in Ger­many. If they have cracks, leaks or holes in the facade, roof or base­ment, a lot of heat is lost in the cold sea­son and the res­id­ents vir­tu­ally heat the out­doors. Dur­ing the sum­mer months, by con­trast, the rooms inside the house often heat up. Wheth­er in winter or in sum­mer, thermal insu­la­tion is the only sens­ible solu­tion that increases your com­fort and saves costs.

Accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics, two thirds of the energy in private house­holds is used for space heat­ing. This is also the energy that is most fre­quently lost in non-insu­lated build­ings: more than half of the thermal energy escapes via the facade and the roof. For this reas­on, the Ger­man Energy Sav­ing Ordin­ance (EnEV) stip­u­lates energy-effi­­cient con­struc­tion includ­ing thermal insu­la­tion. This is now man­dat­ory for new build­ings, but also the required stand­ard when renov­at­ing old build­ings. Since the invest­ment in thermal insu­la­tion takes a few years to pay off, experts recom­mend ret­ro­fit­ting thermal insu­la­tion only in the course of a major refur­bish­ment pro­ject.

Heat nor­mally flows from hot to cold. Espe­cially cracks and holes in the build­ing shell can have very neg­at­ive effects. In winter, the heat is drawn from the heated rooms to the out­side. The money spent on heat­ing vir­tu­ally goes up the chim­ney when tem­per­at­ures drop below zero. Good thermal insu­la­tion is key so that the res­id­ents can­not only bene­fit in winter but also in sum­mer. In unin­su­lated houses, the heat sneaks into the cool­er interi­or space via joints and oth­er leaky areas. Espe­cially under the roof, the rooms will quickly heat up. Power guzz­lers like air con­di­tion­ers and fans are used for cool­ing and boost the energy bill. If, how­ever, the house is well insu­lated from top to bot­tom, res­id­ents can enjoy high­er liv­ing com­fort and at the same time save energy and heat­ing costs.

The import­ant thing about thermal insu­la­tion is, how­ever, that all mater­i­als used for this pur­pose are abso­lutely healthy for liv­ing. Oth­er­wise, harm­ful emis­sions from the build­ing products may have a neg­at­ive impact on indoor air qual­ity. It is there­fore advis­able right from the start not to intro­duce harm­ful sub­stances like volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs) into the house. A simple look at the product pack­aging is suf­fi­cient: If it bears a qual­ity seal such as EMICODE^®, the product is cer­ti­fied to be low-emis­­sion and thus con­trib­utes to the res­id­ents’ health.