Home Style Green - Sustainable Design and Building
20: How to Insulate a Concrete Floor Slab

Why should you insulate the edges of your concrete slab? 

I was amazed when I discovered how much of the heat loss from a concrete floor can occur out the side of the slab, as opposed to down into the ground under the slab. 

It's as much as 80%. 

That means that most of the heat loss (the energy that you're paying for) goes straight out through the narrow bit of exposed concrete around the edge at the base of the house.

Why is this so? Well there are two main reasons and I go into a bit of detail on the blog. Check out http://homestylegreen.com/insulated-concrete-floor

In this podcast we talk solutions. I interview Craig Lonsdale, a Quantity Surveyor with Maxraft. 

Maxraft is a great solution for insulating the whole of a concrete floor, not just underneath. 

http://maxr.co.nz/

Other resources include BRANZ: http://www.branz.co.nz/cms_display.php?sn=123&st=1. Check out their Bulletin number 552 'Edge insulation of concrete floor slabs'.

Please take two minutes to give the show a rating over in iTunes. I'd also love it if you could write a quite review: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/home-style-green/id513213105

For comments and questions, write to me: comments@homestylegreen.com

Cheers,

Matthew Cutler-Welsh

Direct download: 20_How_to_insulate_a_concrete_floor_slab.mp3
Category:Insulation -- posted at: 10:35pm NZDT