Insulated Foundation
After the toughtful orientation of your built environment (your home) on the site you have selected, your attention should be directed to what we call the building envelope. For now, think of your living space as a box with a bottom (the floor), the sides (your exterior walls) and a top (your uppermost ceiling).
In this basic series we want to focus on the basement slab, the foundation walls and the exterior part of the floor systems (sometimes referred to as the band board area).
High Performance Interview
Form-A-Drain & ThermaEZE & Energy Edge
with Ed Stork
Installing ThermaEZE
With Darren Wise
This is why the building codes are demanding that builders meet these insulation requirements.
You can use a product such as Therma Eze that becomes an integral part of the poured foundation. You can also insulate under the basement slab to complete that envelope process.
And, finally before the placement of the exterior walls on the sub-floor system, it is essential that the openings between the floor joist be sealed, foamed and insulated.
These ideas will be explained in more detail in our future in-depth interviews
Sometimes people ask why is it so important to insulate the
foundation area of a home. If you live in a climate that is cold at least part of the year, I contend that not insulating the foundation is akin to you going out in the cold weather
dressed in a heavy parka without your pants on!
Going back to our building envelope analogy, the under slab
of your basement floor and the foundation walls should be
insulated from the continual approximate 55 degrees from
the earth at five feet below grade and the much colder
temperature above that level.
Conservative estimates indicated approximate 30% of the heat energy in a home can escape through an uninsulated foundation.
The Building Envelope: Part 1
