Energy Efficiency is about ensuring that the minimal amount of energy is needed to heat or cool a building over its lifetime. While timber and wood products are good insulating materials themselves, when used together with fibre or foil insulation in a well designed building, minimal external energy is needed to keep a building within the thermal comfort zone of its inhabitants.
For new homes and large additions around Australia, there are requirements to ensure that the building envelope meets a minimum level of energy efficiency for heating and cooling. This is called thermal comfort.
Thermal comfort targets vary from state to state. In NSW the thermal targets are set by BASIX however, most States adhere to a four or five star minimum requirement.
There are many ways to design successful thermally comfortable homes and they can be constructed from many materials. Lightweight timber construction can be easily designed to capture the sun in winter and prevailing breezes in summer to assist heating and cooling. Furthermore, timber framed walls, roofs and platform floors of lightweight timber construction can be easily insulated.
The documents provided below contain the most up-to-date calculated R-values and insulation solutions for various timber framed building elements.
Raised timber and particleboard or plywood floors require insulation in many parts of Australia. The requirements for insulation can be drastically reduced if the sub-floor is enclosed (make sure that minimum BCA ventilation requirements are met) and the cavity between the sub-floor and the wall is blocked.
There are some new wood products coming on to the market that integrate high reflectance (low emittance) metallised foil with particleboard flooring to significantly reduce the heat transfer and thereby increase thermal comfort and meet floor insulation regulatory requirements.
Environmentally Friendly Housing using Timber (PDF, 0.5 MB) National Timber Development Council This guide sets out the principles for building environmentally friendly and energy efficient housing using traditional timber construction.
|
