Insulation Handbook provides clarity and guidelines for energy efficiency
02/Nov/2007
The Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand (ICANZ) has launched the industry’s first ‘Insulation Handbook’ - a guide to thermal performance and total R-value calculations for typical building applications.
“The ‘Insulation Handbook’ will help the building industry comply with the requirements of the Building Code of Australia, AS/NZS 4859.1 and energy rating software and ensures insulation requirements and calculations are readily at hand,” Dennis D’Arcy, Chief Executive Officer of ICANZ said.
The ‘Insulation Handbook’ will be an important resource for designers, specifiers and builders to help them determine the total R-value of common roof, wall and floor construction systems to increase energy efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of building projects.
“The ‘Insulation Handbook’ demonstrates accepted industry installation practices and clarifies the thermal performance of insulation in typical building applications. In doing so, it provides greater assurance to regulators, industry and consumers that the right insulation is being installed and that it will deliver the necessary thermally performance,” Mr D’Arcy said.
“Using the right insulation is fundamental to achieving demonstrable increases in building energy efficiency and reductions greenhouse gas emissions,” he added.
Calculations for the Total R-values in the ‘Insulation Handbook’ have been made for typical situations, and using conservative assumptions expected in actual building systems.
In particular, the effects of anti-glare coatings or dust on the top surfaces of foil insulation have been taken into consideration. The uninsulated R-values for both summer and winter conditions are also provided to demonstrate the thermal resistance of the building system without insulation.
Note, as well as thermal performance, consideration should also be given to the range of factors such as condensation control, moisture absorption, non-combustibility and acoustic performance requirements.
The ‘Insulation Handbook’ is currently available in both hard copy and PDF format from the ICANZ website ‘Latest Documents’ section - http://www.icanz.org.au/tech/latestdocs/.
