Why Insulate Houses?

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H/W                28/04/07                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Investigation – Mike Richards

Why Insulate Houses?

To keep houses warn in the winter we need to hold the temperature inside the house above the temperature outside. To do this heat energy is produced within the house. Unfortunately not all of this heat energy goes to warm the house as some of it is “Lost to the surroundings.” In this experiment you will investigate how heat lost from enclosed spaces can be reduced and if insulation helps slow down the rate at which energy leaves the house.

Investigation - Plan

We will create an experiment to test where heat is lost from the home and how insulation can prevent this. To do this we will need several items. The first of which is a house.

What Will I Investigate?

        There are several options in investigating heat loss. The two Andrew and I chose to focus on would either be:

How Different Types Of Heat Loss Affect The House?

Or

Insulation In Which Part Of The House Would Save The Most Energy?

        First we looked at how to prevent different types of heart loss!

Heat is lost through: Radiation, Conduction and Convection.

Radiation is prevented by Shiny surfaces as waves are reflected by shiny surfaces.

Insulators such as air can stop conduction.

A lid could stop convection as it prevents the heat from escaping from the top.

We analysed this further. It would be possible to try different materials such as foil to stop radiation and wool to stop conduction, but wool will reflect a certain amount of heat meaning it is being used as two types of insulation. There are also other problems such as: thickness and weight. It would be a much fairer test if we used the same material every time.

For this reason we decided to investigate:

Insulation In Which Part Of The House Would Save The Most Energy?

Which Insulation?

The idea of this experiment is to be able to compare the use of the insulation to the home. To do this it was necessary to analyse the types of insulation in the home.

Insulation is commonly found in: The walls, the carpet and the ceiling.

We looked further at the types of insulation. We looked for similarities between all of the types of insulation used in each of these key areas.

  • The Walls – Foam/polystyrene blocks are commonly used
  • The Ceiling  - Fibre glass
  • Carpet – Underlay

The main thing that these types of insulation have in common is that they all are fibrous and they trap air in them. This must be for one of two reasons: Heat is mostly lost through conduction through walls, ceiling etc or that it is a cost effective method of insulating the home. I believe that these fibrous insulators must lose heat much slower than if you just left the house.

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There are many different types of material that could be used, which are fibrous.  The insulation will have to be used throughout the experiment and will have to be of uniform thickness. This will prevent any of the reading being biased or misleading.

An insulator that would stop mostly conduction and convection would be the most suitable material to use. This is because the insulation in the walls and ceiling is of the same nature. There are several problems with using cotton wool, the most troublesome of which is that it would be difficult to get the ...

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