Mortgages , high interest , and crocodile tears.

[Tony Taylor]

John S When we built our forever house up the Blue Mountain's, we plumped for a tiled roof, big mistake, as a tin roof, [One could pick the colour} shed the heat as soon as the sun went down, whereas a tile roof kept the heat in.
Here in Cooma they are mostly tin roofs, and those with new houses or tiled are changing to tin.

Interesting point Des, but a few questions spring to mind, do you have loft insulation, this would help you keep cool in the summer and help to keep heat in during winter. Metal, I would imagine will corrode at some point regardless of any treatment during manufacture, and I suspect would suffer from condensation on the inside on cold weather periods, as for utilising light colours to reflect heat I would say there is a big question about that. In my last job (23 years) our main market was protecting industrial insulation from the effects of weather and mechanical abuse; we spent did a lot of research work with International Paint Ltd. to come up with a solar heat refletive coating but there was very little difference in any of the paint coating colours we tried.

[j.sabourn]

#40 As regards cement or terracotta tiles John ,the building regulations in WA depending how close you live to the coast every 4th or 5th. Tile had to be screwed down , I lived 200 metres off the beach so had to have done , that’s about 3 times the length of mast in another post. My insulation was wool. Cheers JS

[Tony Taylor]

#40 As regards cement or terracotta tiles John ,the building regulations in WA depending how close you live to the coast every 4th or 5th. Tile had to be screwed down , I lived 200 metres off the beach so had to have done , that’s about 3 times the length of mast in another post. My insulation was wool. Cheers JS

Sheep or rock?

[j.sabourn]

Sheep. JS

[Tony Taylor]

Sheep. JS

very trendy John, I wonder if it is cheaper in Aus. I used to do some business with an insulation distributor in Perth who was making very good money from selling shredded Rockwool for loft insulation. He was cutting pipe insulation sections from blocks of Rockwool and very good they were too but when I mentioned all the waste as being uneconomical he told me he was making more from it than then pipe sections.
He adapted a commercial wood shredder to shredding up all the waste and selling it for loft insulation. This was top quality industrial materials, far better than the fibre glass wool crap we get over here.

[James Curry]

On the subject about roof insulation, I have owned 2 properties in France, old houses yes!! the roof insulation was cobs from corn on the cob.

Both areas I lived in produced a lot of corn, so the corn cob was used as an insul in roof spaces
ation

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Tony.
We have a double layer of insulation in th roof space, haven't been up there for around ten years.
You say you use Rock wool as insulation. When we were building a big hospital in Western Sydney we discovered that the plumbers using that stuff started bleeding from the nose, we got it checked by a Company that used to do such things; and they said to stop useing it immediately as it was worse than Asbestos, we got it banned in the building industry.
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

All new houses here in Oz must be 7 star, and with older ones you can see them through holes in the roof.
7 star means insulation in roof and walls, with either tiles or metal roof.
The metal roof will last for longer than tiles in many areas, and in many cases depending where you live the tiles must all be tied down. Adds to the cost.
All fittings such as cookers etc must be 5 star, efficient lighting and in some areas only electric, no gas. Solar panels are not compulsory but many builders fit them, at a cost of course.
North facing is the best as you get the benefit of the sun.
Smaller windows now to reduce heat loss and heat input from the sun, all of this can add up to $100,000 to the cost of a new house.

[Tony Taylor]

Hi Tony.
We have a double layer of insulation in th roof space, haven't been up there for around ten years.
You say you use Rock wool as insulation. When we were building a big hospital in Western Sydney we discovered that the plumbers using that stuff started bleeding from the nose, we got it checked by a Company that used to do such things; and they said to stop useing it immediately as it was worse than Asbestos, we got it banned in the building industry.
Des

I dont use Rockwool Des, I hate the stuff, but it is still a very common industrial insulation material but probably too expensive for domestic use. Most common loft insulation over here is fibreglass wool which I consider is even worse than rockwool especially after it has been installed for a while, the fibres tend to break into small pieces and if you go in your loft and disturb it it creates clouds of minute particles which irritate your skin so god knows what it does to your lungs. You can get one version which is encapsulted in thin polythene bag which makes it easy to handle when rolling it out and it looks pretty lame at about 50mm thick but you have to give it a shake and it puffs out to about 150mm.
There are quite a few options when it comes to insulation materials with some being phenominally good but like everything else it is very expensive for the good stuff.

[John Arton]

The first house we had, a terraced house in east boldon built in 1900, our next door neighbour who was a retired catering super for common brothers, put me onto an outfit that did spray on foam roof insulation, which at the time was regularly advertised in the newspaper, got it done for around £120 in 78 and the effect was instantaneous, never had to have the heating on upstairs even with feet of snow outside.
Now apparently this is banned as it prevents the wooden roof joists from breathing and can lead to rot setting into them. Ever house since then has had fibreglass wool insulation. Here in the u.k roof insulation seems mainly to be blocks of sandwiched foam insulation between building paper or something similar.
Rgds
J.A