Have you ever wondered how insulation or resistance to heat transfer is measured?
You may have heard of R values and U values and thermal conductivity?
Let’s make it simple, the goal of insulation is to stop transfer of heat (or cold)
This can be done by using products that are good at trapping air, and there are many such products. One we recommend is the XPLE recycled foam product.
To get to no heat transfer or loss at all, we are aiming for high insulation. But there are different ways of measuring this in metric and imperial.
To give you an example, the effect of using 200 mm (8″) of XPLE foam in a wall or roof is considered net zero loss of heat.
In the tropics a great insulation would be 50mm of the same XLPE product, which is the equivalent of over 3 METERS (10 feet thick!) of concrete!
Does this surprise you? Concrete and steel are very poor insulators. The other thing about concrete is it has a high masss (weight) which means that it absorbs heat, and at night that heat slowly seeps out again, keeping a hot house hot!
XLPE is very low weight product, and so there is little heat absorbed.
See for your self!
Above are the figures for a net zero wall or roof using XLPE alone.
The calculation above is from a free online insulation calculator. We recommend use of this online insulation calculator to calculate how much insulative value of a wall or roof: https://va-q-tec.com/en/u-value-calculator/
STAY COMFORTABLE! Insulate!
TECHNICAL INFO
To calculate insulation of the laters of materials in a wall – use the calculator!
For R-value, you need to divide the thickness of the material (in metres) by the Thermal conductivity (in W/mK).
Avalue of .034 w/mk for a thickness of 1″ .0025m = .0025/.034 = 0.735 [(m² K)/W]
This in Imperial is a value of R-Value 4.178 [(h ft² °F )/ Btu]
The equivalent U-Value of concrete or brick is U-Value 1.36 [W/(m²K)]