As mentioned in the previous post, insulation is a critical aspect of the design and construction of our house, and this last week has focused on preparing the slab of the house, making sure that it is “warmly wrapped up” to prevent heat loss through the floor.
One of the advisors, Architect Rodrigo Guzman, commented in the previous post that more than two thirds of heat loss is through the floor and therefore insulating this part of the house is vital. However, the current Chilean building standard requires no insulation of floors in contact with the earth.
Another key point of heat loss in a house is the perimetre of the slab, which should be considered as as thermal bridge (more on this concept in a future post). Here we added 5cm of polystyrene with a density of 20kg/m3 in order to mitigate the thermal bridge .
Home Energy Chile 
[…] we are still in the process of “wrapping up” the house. Parts 1 (see post here) and 2 (see post here) on this topic showed how we insulated the foundations, slab and walls of the house to prevent heat […]
LikeLike
[…] walls and roof in accordance with the Chilean Building Code (see post here), but also in the floor (see post here) which is currently not considered within Chilean legislation for our type of house. Our investment […]
LikeLike