heat flow - Northern Built

This post first appeared on the Andersen Windows and Door Website.

We were taught in junior high that hot air rises, the key to that phrase is air. Heat itself moves from someplace warm to someplace cool. A good example of this happens often in cold climates. When standing in front of an old window on a cold night, you feel a chill. This chill is the result of heat leaving your body and moving towards the colder surface of the window glass, heat moving from hot to cold. To slow this movement of heat, we use insulation, by putting on another layer of clothes, we reduce or resist the movement of heat, we have added R-value.

Continue reading “What’s the Difference Between R-Value and U-Factor?”

Wind: The natural movement of air relative to the planet’s surface.

Washing: A method of cleaning.

Wind Washing: Cleaning using air?

Well, not quite. Wind washing with regards to insulation is the ability of air movement to degrade the effectiveness of an insulation. We will get to that in a little bit. First a quick lesson on how fibrous insulations works.

A close-up of Rockwool ComfortBatt showing the fibers and small air pockets.

We use insulation to slow the movement of heat through our building assemblies. Heat will move in three ways, conduction (heat moving when objects are in contact with one another), convection (heat transferred by moving air), and radiation (heat moving through spaces). Fibrous insulations forces heat to move through fibers and small pockets of air, which slows heat movement in both radiation and conduction and prevents heat transmission by way of convection. Continue reading “Construction Design-Wind Washing”