when we think of isolation, that's what we usually thinking of the, the glass wool.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Whacking our walls and our roots.
Speaker:We've reduced conduction because we've taken a bunch of velas and
Speaker:spun it and separated those fibers.
Speaker:but although there's gonna be fibers running from the warmed
Speaker:coal side, they're very thin.
Speaker:And this is the same as Rockwall too, or a, a polyester glass plate.
Speaker:It's all the same from, the
Speaker:mechanism is identical.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All you're trying to do is take a cheapest chips material
Speaker:that you can spin into a wall.
Speaker:Our wool and jumpers, you know, our t-shirts, like everything
Speaker:operates in the same way.
Speaker:All of these fibrous materials is, we're just trying to create
Speaker:as many small way gaps as we can for as little dollars as we can.
Speaker:So why haven't they then been able to pub like an r long gas into the insulation and
Speaker:to improve the value of the insulation?
Speaker:Well, in Syria, I guess you could do something if you then covered
Speaker:it on, say, needs to be closed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It has to be.
Speaker:We know what building side are like, you know, someone's gonna punch hole on it.
Speaker:I mean, this is, this is the, if we have a concern with, you know, with the
Speaker:extreme end, we now have these vacuum in burns, which are, you know, and the
Speaker:extraordinarily good thermal performance.
Speaker:But on a building side, you just need to be careful because all you
Speaker:need to do is punch a screwdriver through that and it's going from
Speaker:super performance to no performance.
Speaker:So let's talk about space.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:This is what really gets the BMI bonnet going as every product manufacturer
Speaker:says invented by nasa, all of them say this and they're usually flogging a
Speaker:foil faced material and they're talking about in, and they are absolutely
Speaker:sort of rye when the, the space industry uses foils all the time.
Speaker:So you think of your classic satellite or spacecraft, you know how it's got
Speaker:that it looks like trapped in tinfoil.
Speaker:What's going on there?
Speaker:That is to reflect the radiant energy from the sun, because if you
Speaker:are in space, you've got the suns of rays hitting your spacecraft.
Speaker:How do you call it now?
Speaker:You can't call it by conduction because you've got space of vacuum around you.
Speaker:You've got nothing to conduct.
Speaker:Two, you can't convec the heater away.
Speaker:Because you've got no air, so you've only got one way in which can, you
Speaker:can cool your spacecraft radiation and that's why you have the, the team
Speaker:face whatever materials the way it is.
Speaker:Um, just, just on the, on the NASA stuff, um, and I think it's 3M have invented
Speaker:this really thin kind of wrap, which has an a value of like R four or something.
Speaker:Have you heard of this stuff?
Speaker:Like it's really thin.
Speaker:How, I don't know how la I don't dunno how it's not the subtle
Speaker:brake strips for steel frames.
Speaker:I've got brake strip strips.
Speaker:I mean, they might have to, you know, find some kind of show note to put it.
Speaker:It's all suited you, but do you want, it's probably a good point to touch on because
Speaker:it, do you wanna talk about the lambda value and then how then the thickness
Speaker:of installation and transcribes into.
Speaker:Performance.
Speaker:So it, the lader is the, the thermal will comeback ticket.
Speaker:It's a material property that's, uh, pointing me on the stand here.
Speaker:That it's a car fundamental character stick the material
Speaker:that's from, you're seeing this piece of hair, everything that we see
Speaker:might, has some form of lambed owner,
Speaker:a lamb.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so for, uh, you know, give some rough numbers.
Speaker:You have standard glass wall insulation.
Speaker:Bat is about 0.04 watts, ber meter, kelvin, a low value, lower
Speaker:values are better, less conduction.
Speaker:Then you go through just things like pine timber, softwood timbers.
Speaker:They're about 0.13.
Speaker:Hardwoods are a bit denser and therefore have more conductivity.
Speaker:There are 0.18, aluminum is several thousand, and steel is about 50.
Speaker:The, you think of it as risk ratio.
Speaker:You know, 0.04 is my best case.
Speaker:My, my glass full bat.
Speaker:If I just build a ball straight outta Tinder, say CLT.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Then it's about 0.13.
Speaker:So all that tells me straight off the bat is if I wanna get the same ave or
Speaker:thermal resistance out of a wall and I make, let's say it's a hundred mil
Speaker:of um, glass wall, then it's got a certain if to get the same out of ACL T.
Speaker:Well, it's gonna to be three times a stick because the lamb, the
Speaker:thermal conductivity is three times higher than that of the glass hole.
Speaker:And then I'm gonna build it.
Speaker:That will add of solid steel 50 50 to divided by coin oh four is some we need
Speaker:to calculator for, but you're gonna have to build that wall 10 meters thick.
Speaker:You get the same thermal resistances at a hundred again blaster.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, so there's a, there's a really good argument there for not building
Speaker:your hundred steel, hold on.
Speaker:You can build out steel and I'm one of the biggest people who
Speaker:have said steel sucks for framing.
Speaker:But if you are then to NCI externally.
Speaker:Could it be possible?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:As long as you've got a continuous layer of it into the, you're essentially
Speaker:separating a structural layer, the steel fraying from your insulation layer, which,
Speaker:which which is typically not done, which is typically not done in Australia, your
Speaker:actors, but is done internationally.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then you just, it gets, you know, in principle you go, well
Speaker:that's easy enough, I'll do that.
Speaker:But then you've gotta remember, you've gotta put the windows in the
Speaker:insulation plane, don this wine.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And what are you gonna do at your slab junctions?
Speaker:And you, you've got, you know, the details might come back to bite
Speaker:you.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:And the aesthetics that, all that kind of stuff, like the finish.
Speaker:So you, you touched on wing washing before because, um, and I know everyone
Speaker:uses an analogy of the jumper and the Gore-Tex jack and all that kind of
Speaker:stuff, but, um, and this is relevant again to a project that you and I
Speaker:are also working on together and.
Speaker:I, it is.
Speaker:I guess the point I'm trying to get at with this question is that not all
Speaker:the insulation is made equal because some perform differently than others.
Speaker:Even though they may have the same R value, they depend.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:So when you look at the, the data sheet for a glass wall product,
Speaker:you'll get different, like a level of thermal conductivity is reported,
Speaker:you know, I use 0.04 as an example, but it will vary from anything.
Speaker:Then about 0.033 up to about 0.05.
Speaker:And so the, at the lower end, the better.
Speaker:So lower values being better that 0.03, three range is, it tends to
Speaker:be a higher density glass wool.
Speaker:So what they're doing there is they're spinning little glass
Speaker:full and they try to create in the same thickness, more air gaps.
Speaker:If I can have to pick a number, a hundred air gaps in that 90 mil thick
Speaker:bat versus 50, then more else being equal, I would expect that to have that.
Speaker:So more smaller air gaps are bigger, better than.
Speaker:Less bigger ones.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:And density is also bit the sound though.
Speaker:I think this is the other thing that so many people that are like, oh, we
Speaker:put our four between our sun floor and our first story, that's like, well we
Speaker:shouldn't be looking at insulation there.
Speaker:It's useful but for sound, not for,
Speaker:and so gives some acoustic dampier as well.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Um, but the difference in those glass wall products, and this is the same
Speaker:between a wall, a wall glass wall bat, and a ceiling glass wall bat.
Speaker:If you look at your compare your data sheets is the wall glass.
Speaker:Wall bat tends to be denser because they're trying to
Speaker:stop the slumping in the mall.
Speaker:And so the thermal conductivity flanders tend to be lower, so they'll
Speaker:tend to be anywhere between 0.033 and 0.04, which sort of rule the thumb.
Speaker:Whereas when you look at your glass wool ceiling bats, they're
Speaker:much lighter and fluffier.
Speaker:They're lower density.
Speaker:So your wall bats are sort of usually in the 20 to 28 kilogram per cubic
Speaker:meter density range, whereas your ceiling bats are closer to a half.
Speaker:That 20, about 10 kilograms per cubic meter and therefore the
Speaker:thermal conductivity is higher.
Speaker:They've got a more larger air gaps.
Speaker:So is that so in a ceiling?
Speaker:So if I was to say, hypothetically, if I put two R four HD bats, that
Speaker:would be better than one R eight bat?
Speaker:No,
Speaker:it's the same thing.
Speaker:The same as saying high value, but, but, but you've got
Speaker:better thermal conductivity.
Speaker:Yeah, because the material property you are, you let's you
Speaker:stack those two R four bats.
Speaker:So HD high density Yeah.
Speaker:Is the usual back burn that the manufacturers use.
Speaker:Those R four bats are usually 140 mil deep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So you stack two of those, you get 280 mox.
Speaker:Your R eight that is north of 300 mil.
Speaker:So it's just getting into a smaller amount instead.
Speaker:Yeah, it's
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:So, so here's a question.
Speaker:You talked about slumping before.
Speaker:So our R six R for whatever they are, over time, potentially the value of
Speaker:that wall assembly could change if we're talking about in a roof space,
Speaker:you know, I mean that 300 tall bit of insulation might don't need to sag that.
Speaker:I thought they only go that way.
Speaker:Not like length winds like that.
Speaker:Doesn't throw that
Speaker:well in a, in a ceiling you will get some slumping, but they have a binder to
Speaker:try and tain them off over the decades.
Speaker:Now if you're gonna wax stuff on top of 'em or you've got a layer of 400
Speaker:dead rats or something Yeah, some kind of thick, it is gonna slum time
Speaker:and you will therefore produce the thermal performance of that, that bat.
Speaker:So what was normally our six wing installed that is now
Speaker:performing like our four.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But that's why the rubbing probably is even better with external
Speaker:membranes and a ice and air tie.
Speaker:And with side, you're not getting things in there.
Speaker:You're not getting wind like it's sits there and it's done.
Speaker:Which is back at Al Goretex.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Will then jumper analogy.
Speaker:But the, the sumping problem's more problematic and a wall
Speaker:because it's course got gravity.
Speaker:So you've got a 1200 high bat.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so you got the self supporting weight of that bat.
Speaker:And if you go a super lightweight, cheapo, fluffy bat,
Speaker:yes.
Speaker:Over time it starts sagging at the top.
Speaker:And so under your GaN, when install it, you put the bat heart
Speaker:up against the face of your kn.
Speaker:Now it's dropped down and you've got a 50 mil gap.
Speaker:And then as and as Jess says so, and she's probably stolen this from somebody else,
Speaker:you know, cold squats, eagle bottle spots.
Speaker:And if you've got that slumping at the top of the wall assembly, you've
Speaker:got a cold swap there, which could potentially lead to molded condensation.
Speaker:And from a thermal point of view, this is not a linear trouble.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So you've got 1% non-coverage in that law, which is eminently doable.
Speaker:Even a relative diligent insulation installed means is
Speaker:and have some tiny steering.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Then you are reducing your thermal performance by your of 10%.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:five.
Speaker:You know, if you have 5% non-coverage or 10%, which is far more common in
Speaker:your standard bill where the Yeah.
Speaker:Cut out range.
Speaker:Your aircons, your power points, your, or anything to pipes, you know,
Speaker:then it's not, you're not having a 10% reduction if they're all four,
Speaker:but it's much, much greater than that.
Speaker:It could be 50% or more.
Speaker:So what you told your client, well, we're gonna have R two five in the
Speaker:walls is now performing like R 1.2.
Speaker:So I kind of want to go and go back and like broaden this out as a
Speaker:very basic concept with insulation.
Speaker:We insulate not just two walls, but I think most people think we
Speaker:do walls and ceilings, like they're the most common areas, but fours.
Speaker:And that means slabs and sub floors, both areal end
Speaker:Well, uh, yeah and this is where, that really does depend
Speaker:on what your climate is.
Speaker:So if you are so Perth, Sydney, or North, that ground cup flick.
Speaker:So you put a slab on gr straight on ground without any insulation can
Speaker:actually be beneficial because you can use the ground as a heat sink.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So 'cause the grounds temperature, especially say Darwin or somewhere is
Speaker:gonna be as as cool as, or colder than the ambient temperature for much of the year.
Speaker:And it's stable too.
Speaker:And it's stable so.
Speaker:So some floor they say Darwin just you insulate it
Speaker:probably
Speaker:because you
Speaker:go if you're air conditioning your house.
Speaker:Yeah, because, and this is the other thing in insulation, isn't it?
Speaker:Oh uh, insulation is great for me in minter, but it's
Speaker:costuming saunas like, well
Speaker:I mean I'd also argue to be, without being a risk of circling back to a joke
Speaker:that we said before, it probably depends on how open that sun floor is as well.
Speaker:'cause if it's on still yeah, it's completely openly
Speaker:got lots of wind washing.
Speaker:Then yeah, you probably want to each try to cover it, but if, if the air
Speaker:in there is relatively still, you're probably not gonna have, maybe that you've
Speaker:always got an exceptionally hum climate.
Speaker:Well, this is very true.
Speaker:Um, so you wouldn't just be, yeah.
Speaker:So now you wouldn't just have you, you'd bury your joints, your chipboard because
Speaker:the humidity would just soak into that shipboard, wouldn't then it be ship.
Speaker:We get mold and water.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But, but a lot of that will depend on whether your air conditioning space.
Speaker:So think of your classic tropical home that's got the lewd windows very open and
Speaker:so outdoor remote, they, they operated pretty well in an extremely difficult
Speaker:climate because they were air conditioned.
Speaker:It's, once we started air conditioning those homes, you are driving the interior
Speaker:temperature below the exterior jut.
Speaker:And so as that moist super hot mo, 9% relative air gets in through
Speaker:that wall or up through your cell floor, gets inside your, got your AC
Speaker:on the 25 degrees, it drops below.
Speaker:Dewpoint got this massive amount of moisture in that air ball.
Speaker:It's getting absorbed into your structural floor sheep and your trouble.
Speaker:So this is probably, when you say moisture and stuff, talking about insulation,
Speaker:then all ins installations are different when it comes to touching your moisture
Speaker:and dealing with moisture as well.
Speaker:And just putting a certain insulation, a certain wall
Speaker:structure, always not the greatest.
Speaker:So we look at an old Victorian home that's weatherboard, clat hard will start
Speaker:plaster simply wacking a glass will, but in there might not be the best answer.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So each, each material has different, uh, hydroscopic properties like ability to
Speaker:absorb moisture, both luco and and vapor.
Speaker:Uh, and so that's a, a head character sticker.
Speaker:Any insulation?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Don't want it to absorb by general.
Speaker:You don't wanna to absorb or you, you
Speaker:want to be hydrophobic.
Speaker:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You don't, you want to get rid of that, that moisture
Speaker:throat hydrophobic or stop it from getting wet.
Speaker:Well, yeah, but you could always assume, you know, assume worst case somehow I
Speaker:about guess that this is gonna get a plumbing leak, something's gonna happen.
Speaker:Can it dry?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so most of our insulation products, our standard, the glass
Speaker:will be treated with the chemicals to try and, uh, reduce the ability
Speaker:for them to absorb that moisture.
Speaker:But as we know where the glass will back, if you leave it outside in the rain,
Speaker:it mats up together and it's cactus.
Speaker:You gotta check it.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:We've gone back to types of render and I'm not sure if you know the
Speaker:answer to this and I'm probably then just, um, gonna be relying on
Speaker:what your opinion on this depends.
Speaker:So I built a hen house, right?
Speaker:And I know Brad's built a head of hem house as well.
Speaker:My particular example had render on the outside and render on the inside.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And in my mind that was um, for the air tightness and we're resistive.
Speaker:Now hemp, the hemp walls that we are building are 300 wide.
Speaker:Now how that assembly is working from an uh, an R value point of view
Speaker:is the same theory as a glass wall.
Speaker:It's trapping air in there.
Speaker:Now, if we're not rendering the inside, 'cause I know it is different if
Speaker:you're not rendering the inside, if we're not rendering the inside, which
Speaker:is the warm side of the assembly, are you still going to get wind washing?
Speaker:On the inside.
Speaker:Is it gonna impact the arvo of that wall if we haven't rendered to the inside?
Speaker:Only very marginal,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Beca, because the wind, the influence of wind washing is, is affected by density.
Speaker:If I have my, let's go back to glass walls.
Speaker:Our yard where you get your standard ceiling back, you know,
Speaker:was very light and fluffy thing.
Speaker:You pick up that middle of tags, you know, clearly far more air than glass.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:If you blow air past that, it quite easily scours and get very deep into the loft and
Speaker:therefore reduces the thermal performance.
Speaker:If I go to a higher density wall bat, or I go to start jumping to other
Speaker:fibrous products like the winow walls.
Speaker:Your Rockwall type products.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which are, you know, about 80 kilogram per UIC meter density as goes to
Speaker:your high twenties at most for glass.
Speaker:And you've got far a far denser product.
Speaker:Far smaller.
Speaker:Air gaps and so a much, it's much more difficult for the
Speaker:air to move into that space.
Speaker:So, so then that is the same with, uh, mineral wall or rock wall when you're
Speaker:using that as an outside of that weather resistive barrier, where, and I think it's
Speaker:a conversation I had with you, you know, isn't this being impacted by wind washing?
Speaker:Because our ventilator cavity is then immediately on the outside
Speaker:of that exposed rock ball.
Speaker:But I think then your comment was, because it's so dense, it's negligible.
Speaker:That and was, there's a study somewhere they, like, they did a study on this
Speaker:and they, I think once it hits a certain density, I had 96 grams of Q meter.
Speaker:It actually been washing fractally, just goes, and it's the same
Speaker:for, for my fiber as well.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so again, it's a, the, the first metric you look at is density.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So you send the wood fiber voids in the order of maybe
Speaker:60 kilogram per meter density.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So again, twice that is your best glass for Yep.
Speaker:Getting towards your rock wall type density.
Speaker:If you've got a dense insulation like hemp or rock wall or, um, wood fiber.
Speaker:Do we also see benefits of thermal mass in those particular products?
Speaker:And thermal?
Speaker:Can you explain how thermal mass is in situation, either
Speaker:the two different things?
Speaker:Uh, so yes, the denser of the product is inherently, it's got more weight to
Speaker:it, and weight is related to the ability of, of a material absorb container heat.
Speaker:Um, what is thermal mass?
Speaker:It's, it's a, it's a, we, it's character, material character to store heat,
Speaker:but in order to store that heat, it needs to be able to absorb that heat.
Speaker:And so a material with very high thermal mass is classic examples.
Speaker:Unlike concrete.
Speaker:Very high thermal mass, yes, but also very poor insulator because the
Speaker:app, the inherent ability of that material to absorb heat also means
Speaker:it's very good at conducting that heat.
Speaker:And so if I use, say a precast concrete wall and put it on the interior of my
Speaker:building, then it's got very good thermal mass, but very poor, very poor thermal
Speaker:resistance because it absorbs that heat, allows that heat to carry through
Speaker:the depth of that precast wall and it just disappears towards the exterior.
Speaker:So now for like my house for example, the moment I have a slab and stand
Speaker:the suburb port, I'm now about to put 75 mil XPS insulation on top.
Speaker:And then I'm gonna pull a hundred, I think a hundred mil of infill concrete
Speaker:is that now getting the vest of both wheels where I've got a great from my
Speaker:sucker battery for the home, but also that that complete in continual slayer
Speaker:is a, is stopping that resistance that he'd been able to trouble through.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That, that's basically right.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So you, your, your screen, your fine finish on slope on top of the XPS is
Speaker:providing really good thermal mass.
Speaker:It's not conducting through to the exterior to the ground because
Speaker:you put the XPS in between.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:And your battery analogy is perfect because you think about
Speaker:it out that the electricity grid batteries do not create electricity.
Speaker:Things that create bulk electricity are your fossil fuel power plants.
Speaker:Your winds, your solar plants.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They're the ones that create the electrons.
Speaker:The battery's just storing it.
Speaker:You've got no means of generating those electrons in the first place.
Speaker:There's no point handling the bash in the same way as with thermal mass.
Speaker:It's just a store of heat.
Speaker:It's not a creator of heat.
Speaker:Does it matter as much in a passive house?
Speaker:No, because the passive house has inherently got a
Speaker:hy thermal inertia tablet.
Speaker:So let's talk about passive house certified passive house modeled,
Speaker:um, lower door hitting all the metrics, certified plap on the wall.
Speaker:Does that house perform differently?
Speaker:If the clients are living in there showering, eating, and there's no
Speaker:furniture, they're just sleeping on the ground, does that house perform
Speaker:like noticeably different than if there was furniture in the house?
Speaker:So it will almost certainly tanks are fluctuate a bit more than
Speaker:the house with lots of thermal mass be that for Aja and Peanut.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Uh, and, and, and is any of that taken into consideration when you are modeling?
Speaker:So there's
Speaker:some standard factors that are applied, but, but, but again, it, it's far less
Speaker:important than in a buil house because the way in which you do that envelope
Speaker:is creating the thermal inertia itself.
Speaker:That tractor mass within the house, you know.
Speaker:We're reassuming, there's cabinetry in there and there's another and
Speaker:a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker:You know, there's tons and tons of stuff in our houses.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All of which inherently add out that too.
Speaker:So I wanna go back to insulation where we talk about roofs.
Speaker:And let's just assume a trust roof for a minute.
Speaker:Should, should we be inside at the bottom cord or hit it at the top cord?
Speaker:Like the warm roof first.
Speaker:Cold roof.
Speaker:Because then the second question tonight, is a warm roof insulating at the top cord?
Speaker:Or is warm roof insulating externally?
Speaker:I dunno about you, but where does design you with rafters?
Speaker:Constantly at the moment.
Speaker:'cause there is that cause now in the NCC.
Speaker:That pretty much means you have to inte like at the top quarter.
Speaker:It's, I mean, it's also tricky too.
Speaker:'cause if you start talking about coal brews, you gotta like the NCC
Speaker:state and you gotta ventilate that.
Speaker:As in, if we're talking about, um, air type buildings, possible, I mean, it
Speaker:technically is above your, or most cases above your, um, intelligent membrane.
Speaker:But if you don't have an intelligent membrane and you have a cold roof and
Speaker:you're relying on your external membrane to create air tightness, then you're
Speaker:potentially creating an issue up there.
Speaker:But that's a bit's.
Speaker:Let's here to go back a sec. I can imagine, like you have to now have
Speaker:your external rack, not airtight.
Speaker:And so the construction code, essentially it's requiring you ensure
Speaker:that external membrane is not airtight.
Speaker:You've gotta have that opening.
Speaker:The, if you've got the potential for wind washing across those like fluffy bats,
Speaker:be as you're laying that air coming into the, even draw across the top of the bat.
Speaker:And so what you're seeing, a lot of details, not so much in Australia,
Speaker:means actually is I'll put a bi and that first meter or two in from the
Speaker:eve, just a bit of ply or something.
Speaker:That's
Speaker:assuming you have an eve though.
Speaker:Oh, well, at at least, at least from wherever that gap is on top of the wall
Speaker:over that first meter or two of the bats, just where that is coming in to
Speaker:reduce that scour heavy washing effect or the bat is that it loops through
Speaker:that void and up out through just
Speaker:like sitting here like thinking there's so many fucking things you need to
Speaker:think about when you're building a house that could create risk.
Speaker:Like, and, and, and you know, this is where I kind of go back to the own
Speaker:like and spend talks at this a lot.
Speaker:Your real insurance policy is a certified passive house.
Speaker:That's your insurance policy right there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, absolutely.
Speaker:The quality checking process with passive house is what you are buying.
Speaker:Is buying.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:Now I, it, it, now, you know, potential clients doesn't do
Speaker:this for about me and Matt.
Speaker:Like we, I would say our good builders and we think about all of these things.
Speaker:So I guess the risk when people are employing us is lower, but I'm thinking
Speaker:about, um, people who are listening to this podcast and their brains just
Speaker:exploding now just thinking, fuck, how am I managing all this risk?
Speaker:A really easy solution is just to get a certified building.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:But I think key phrase there is managing risk.
Speaker:It's not zero risk.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:We all we can do in life is manage and mitigate the risk as best we possibly can.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:If you're a young kid starting out, or a young builder or a young architect,
Speaker:I think it's really important that you do your first two, three houses.
Speaker:As a certify cannot certify you so you know what to expect.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:So you know what the process is.
Speaker:So it becomes part of just process.
Speaker:And this is the issue on now hand, this is a whole other conversation,
Speaker:is the apprentices that we're now producing only know one way.
Speaker:Boom.
Speaker:And it's awesome.
Speaker:Do So what happens when they want to go up by themselves and they have to pick
Speaker:up the other nine artists of the work that's out there, that's pure crap.
Speaker:Now what do they do?
Speaker:Because they're not, they're not designed and haven't been taught
Speaker:to build to a L standard, and how do they kick up that first job?
Speaker:Because they're gonna be way more expensive.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, I mean, let's hope by the time that happens that the, that the actual
Speaker:in the level of quality and the, the, the standard increases and they have
Speaker:to, and they have to, and then there's education from clients coming through.
Speaker:You know, I feel like, you know, every day that goes past, now there's more
Speaker:and more people demanding this stuff.
Speaker:Like I'd have everyone demands it, but can they afford it?
Speaker:And there's an well, a message on top.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But, but that's okay.
Speaker:So if they, if they're.
Speaker:If their number one goal is to have a healthy building, let's forget about
Speaker:energy, fish renewal, that kind of stuff.
Speaker:If their number one goal is to have a healthy building, then everything
Speaker:else falls underneath that.
Speaker:So the, the, the joinery, the finishes, the fixtures, all of that
Speaker:becomes secondary to performance.
Speaker:If, if that swings around and, and aesthetics and everything
Speaker:like that is for a top priority.
Speaker:Well, I know that building's not for me.
Speaker:It's, it's, you know, I'll just walk away from it and I'm starting
Speaker:to see more and more people.
Speaker:Well, a hundred percent of people come to me wanting performance.
Speaker:I just wanna go back to a full, we just talked about 50 back testing
Speaker:and rounding off insulation testing.
Speaker:Inte is very important.
Speaker:Um, and it's not as simple as just picking up the thermal camera and
Speaker:walking around and checking, because that doesn't tell you the answers.
Speaker:You need to do, it needs to be difference from temperature inside
Speaker:to outside to actually check it.
Speaker:And, and remember, and this comes back to our discussion, re
Speaker:conduction and the action radiation.
Speaker:What's, what's the thermal camera measuring?
Speaker:It's measuring radiation.
Speaker:And what did we say about radiation?
Speaker:It's a material property.
Speaker:So different materials in at different ways.
Speaker:So a material, I could have a black material and a white material at the
Speaker:same temperature, but they will be emitting differently and therefore
Speaker:they will like here to be a different temperature on your thermal imager.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it's, so really the best way to do a thermal imaging ca,
Speaker:like how we test our insulation.
Speaker:We'll do a visual author and kind of have a team on site visually watching
Speaker:why they're getting installed.
Speaker:I don't know the people that we use actually care about and stuff.
Speaker:So they are documenting too.
Speaker:They'll document the corner and how they'd installed it.
Speaker:So there is that reference point.
Speaker:And then we'll try as best that we can to either eat or call the house and sign.
Speaker:And go around with a camera and check it.
Speaker:And sometimes it's really, really hard.
Speaker:Sometimes we physically can't do it.
Speaker:In winter coming up it's a bit easier, but in summer when it's a
Speaker:hot day, it can be quite difficult.
Speaker:And, and that's a perfectly valid use of a similar image of assuming as I think
Speaker:the man, you've got this stu tray, you've got the glass wall in there, or polyester,
Speaker:whatever that the insulation it is bio plasible and, and membranes going on.
Speaker:So as long as you'll be looking in that frame, only at the wall and not
Speaker:the wall and the window together.
Speaker:Because the window will give you spurious results.
Speaker:Yes, because it's, it, it's in mis is vastly different to that
Speaker:if the glass wall and the timber.
Speaker:So you kinda have to be up close really?
Speaker:Or
Speaker:you, you just, just focus your effort on.
Speaker:You know, it's a, that it means you were looking at this cy to what's on
Speaker:the, in the field of view of the sensor.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you're just looking within that space and going, right, here's my wall cavity.
Speaker:There's four bays here.
Speaker:There's a little purpley dark colored spot right there in that corner.
Speaker:I'm not sure if got that bat right in there, what it put out.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And how much can you compress those backs?
Speaker:Because by what percentage can we, 'cause sometimes we've used the, when we do the,
Speaker:um, internal cavity bat, we actually saw 50 mil polyester, which they're quite
Speaker:dense, but our patterns are only 45.
Speaker:We also usually put a final packer, so we're not compressing it.
Speaker:But you can compress them slightly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You, you ca you can to an extent, and again, it depends on the
Speaker:density of the bat to start with.
Speaker:So the way away fluffy glass wall backs, you can compress a, uh, an thelist
Speaker:now and it's caught 10 to 20% maybe.
Speaker:Um, what really matters with insulation as it's continuity.
Speaker:So exactly what you're talking about with thermal imager, m
Speaker:being diligent and installing it.
Speaker:Make sure you've got a perfectly.
Speaker:Install it in those cavities.
Speaker:A bit of modest compression.
Speaker:I wouldn't be too fussed about.
Speaker:It's, it's that continuity there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that means like, around the windows is like spray foam here, uh, with a closed
Speaker:self spray foam or ing in some glass or like, we really need to, you, you've
Speaker:gotta make sure that it is in Melbourne, because I know it depends where you are.
Speaker:We want that 360 layup around that whole house.
Speaker:Um, this is a nice segue to probably a question I've got now.
Speaker:Whenever we've done slabs, I've always got off cuts at XVS.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And it just kills me that, that just gets thrown away.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:There's not a huge amount, there's no recycling facilities at the moment.
Speaker:I know that there is some chatter at the moment that, that's starting to change.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:We've just, we keep all of ours and then we use it for our external wall junctions.
Speaker:Now someone has actually asked me before, are you worried about.
Speaker:Any risk there because I, I just think in my mind, well that can get wet.
Speaker:It's not gonna get covered up like immediately.
Speaker:And we just put it in as we're framing so it doesn't get forgotten about.
Speaker:Is there a risk in our climate, which is reasonably mild of using
Speaker:XBS blocks in that law junction?
Speaker:So in a heating dominated climate, remember what you want fundamentally
Speaker:is you want increasing vapor pers Yes.
Speaker:As you move out through your assembly.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And so a foam, like an XPS is relatively vapor impermeable.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Whereas something like glass wool is very vapor permeable.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So your ideal assembly is, you know, this is an imaginary assembly course,
Speaker:but if you've got an under frame, we wake XPS on the interior face
Speaker:and put glass full on the outside.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's better in your heating dominated climate than the inverse
Speaker:of putting the XPS on the outside.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But.
Speaker:In the summer it's reversed, so I'm not, no one should go away and actually
Speaker:build what I've just described.
Speaker:I are those two options because they're both scary, scary written all over them.
Speaker:Because in the summer, if you build that first option, especially on the
Speaker:inside of the stud in Melbourne, then the vapor drug is towards the interior.
Speaker:When you air condition your house, depending on what set point
Speaker:temperature you have it at, and depending on the thickness of the
Speaker:XPS versus the glass full, you might have be below the viewpoint.
Speaker:What we're talking about now is, is great because it's getting people
Speaker:thinking that's getting because, because there's not one solution
Speaker:for every different scenario.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So in your professional opinion, should we stop using those
Speaker:XBS off cuts in that scenario?
Speaker:Well, you are also putting an internal lawyer in vapor control in Correct.
Speaker:And you for HRV.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And so on that basis, and as you said, you build in a relatively mild rec client
Speaker:held, uh, then the risks are reduced.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Doing that.
Speaker:Now, if you told me I had so much XPS in this job, so I've just whacked it along
Speaker:with the outside of my one 40 frame No.
Speaker:On a whole facade.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Then I've got a problem with that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But it intuitively, it feels like in isolated spots like that all junctions
Speaker:where you've got a tricky little corner.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And there's obviously a couple of reasons why I like to got one that, that doesn't
Speaker:get forgot to get wet, but also it's suffering that experie going into landfill
Speaker:and it's getting a reimagined life.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, I wonder if we leave with their cam, like I think, um, I'm going
Speaker:to, I. Really enjoy, just think back to this and probably have to listen
Speaker:to it to a few for a few times.
Speaker:'cause there's so much to unpack there.
Speaker:Um, but also I love this episode because I think it's gonna get a lot of people
Speaker:just thinking it's gonna make people stop and think because as we, uh, demonstrated,
Speaker:knock all insulation is equal.
Speaker:They're all different.
Speaker:They're all for different purposes.
Speaker:Um, perform differently under different conditions.
Speaker:Um, and I think the massive, the biggest takeaway is modeling,
Speaker:wolfie analysis, managing moisture.
Speaker:Oh, what else is there?
Speaker:Add to, that's the word.
Speaker:The depending, there's a lot of depending.
Speaker:There's a lot of depending.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And there's not one kind of like vinegar stroke, which just is,
Speaker:well, this is how we should build.
Speaker:Like, it depends.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I, I think we've gotta set aside the black and white.
Speaker:That worth that will fail.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:' cause we cannot, we can't say that definitively on any one
Speaker:project, any one location.
Speaker:It's a game of probabilities and we're simply trying to reduce the
Speaker:probability of bad things happening.