Europe as well as northern Americas have had to implement insulation in their homes and structures against predominantly the cold, some time before it became a green issue. In South Africa, it took quite a while to for our property developers to understand that we needed to insulate mostly against high temperature – so we started contemplating pink, and now, fortunately, also understand the greater image of green into the bargain.
Although building insulation is not actually a new approach in South Africa, it wasn’t seriously practised other than a bit of ‘pink in the roof’ by a lot of of us. It took a particular renovator and his environmentally sensitive wife building their perfect home and going bananas on ‘green’, that we as, John Citizen, became mindful of the genuine issues in insulation. As with the situation of solar energy, it took us a long time to understand that there are better ways of doing things also with regards to insulation of our homes and other buildings.
These days, we have available a large span of uniquely created components to effectively insulate our homes properly against high temperature and cold. Sadly it took ESCOM (more precisely: the failure of ESCOM) and a renovator to spur us into action of realising we had to do something to not only counter the assault on the planet, by air pollution, but also to conserve the our energy resources. So, in a short time we have become very aware of the whole problem of insulation to keep our tongues in our mouths in summertime and to live outside our covers during winter and saving on electrical energy supply into the bargain. Anyone residing in the Cape Town surrounds or along the west coast of South Africa without air-con will tell you it is living hell in the summer months. Yet relatively few homes are built with suitable insulation, which could mostly prevent one melting in your home in summer time and freezing in the winter months. There is a variety of products available on the South African market to proficiently insulate the ceilings of houses and other buildings. Apart from the obvious pink solution there are a variety of other green products accessible. They cover anything from filling your ceiling with a product which is sprayed into the ceiling under pressure covering the inside of the ceiling with a layer of foam like material that dries into a solid insulation. This material is flame proof and even those small fellows with the long tails and long teeth don’t like it, so they will not nest in your ceiling.
There are also various blanket-like materials offered to either install in the ceiling or to wrap pipes with, in addition to acting as a geyser blanket. All of such components have a profound influence on insulation, should you have them installed. Even a flat roof house or a concrete ceiling house can effectively be insulated employing a light-weight insulation mortar, which is sprayed on in an easy operation. In constructing new homes the wall cavities should be filled up with insulation material, like polystyrene, to further assist in insulating the building and saving energy.