Ideally the best insulation is the least dense as density typically relates to thermal conductivity. Where stone/brick really helps is in raw mass, if you’ve ever been in a basement you’ll kinda know what I mean. It’ll flatten the temperature changes and make it more stable but if it’s always hot or always cold it’s not great.
The US has mostly rock wool or fiberglass insulation and not just wood clad in gypsum. But much of the US can go from -26 in the winter to 35 in the summer. I used to live in a city with a latitude about the same as Madrid that would get to almost -30 and as high as 41. The house was made of brick but past that outer layer it had a wood frame with insulation to maintain heating or cooling.
bstix@feddit.dk 5 months ago
Depends a lot on the construction and age, but there’s really no type of construction that doesn’t need insulation.
There’s a specific UK issue though. For some reason they’re falling behind and have been for some time. F.i. The rest of northern Europe are using triple or quadruple pane windows, while many houses in UK still have single pane windows.
The windows alone being 2-3 generations behind code is only part of it. Loft insulation is also far behind:
theguardian.com/…/uk-insulation-scheme-would-take…
stsquad@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Also older housing stock. My house is over 120 years old so that does limit done of what you can do to improve things. That said with decent windows and loft insulation there is something to be said for the thermal properties of a bunch of stone.
bstix@feddit.dk 5 months ago
120 years ago is about the time they started doing double brick walls. Leaving air between the inner and outer brick walls was basically the first kind of insulation.
In the 1970s they figured out to put polystyrene beads in the space between the walls. This idea has recently been improved by better materials, so it’s still possible to update the insulation on these old houses. Whether it’s financially feasible is a different question.
Another method is to put more insulation on the inside, but this takes up space and early attempts in the 1950-1980s proved to do very little except creating a fire hazard. If a house has those old panels on the walls, it’s probably better to remove them.
A neighbour of mine recently put very thick insulation on the outside of the house. Must have cost a fortune and it looks weird, but I guess it works really well. It also requires that all windows are moved, so it’s probably easier to just build a new house.
So there a few options, but money is likely better spend on changing the roof, windows or the heat source.
Nighed@sffa.community 5 months ago
Most houses in the UK have double glazing. Not all (somehow - if there isn’t a grant for that there should be!) but by now most have upgraded.
Triple glazing appears to be getting started, I got a free upgrade to triple when I upgraded!