As soon as the summer season comes, the air-cooling industry becomes the busiest. Coolers and air conditioners being repaired or repairmen carrying them on bikes and scooters to the workstations are very common sights visible. Coming of summers is the coming of these units into action.
Summers become unbearable and to overcome them, lot of money is spent on these beating-heat units. But that is just one solution to beat the heat. You can adapt various other natural solutions which need to followed, at the time of construction and sometimes after that too.
One of these methods is thermal bridging (also called thermal breaks) which keeps cool naturally. It is a method where a material with a low thermal conductivity is used on the windows and walls as it will prevent heat from entering inside. This is an organic way to create insulation.
As the sun starts showing ruthlessness, the best option one has is insulation. It is only the insulation that helps in protecting the house from the excruciating heat outside. But the benefits of insulation don’t end there. They even help in winters by keeping the house warm.
Considering some parts of India receive immense amount of heat, solar radiation is the main culprit behind the heating up of exterior walls to very high temperatures. And these high temperatures will automatically find their way to interiors too, causing the heat to become unbearable, if and only if the insulating thermal breaks in home are not properly used.
Another example is of the balcony. The floor of a room is the same that will extend to the balcony too. The part of the floor which is in the balcony will heat up immensely during the day-time. As a result, this heat will seep into the interiors also. But this can be prevented by the insulating thermal breaks in home. If you interfere with this heat by using a material which is used as thermal breaker like wood fibre, perlite or earth soil on the jointing in the middle, you can get rid of the unwanted heat in the interiors.
In Delhi, which has an extreme kind of weather, what people want most is to interrupt the heat from reaching inside the house to keep it cool and comfortable for summers. And only thermal breaks can be useful in this. The bizarre thing to be looked upon is that the modern designed houses use materials like metals and glass, which are extremely attractive and classy to look at but at the same time are terrible insulators.
Thanks to the modern and unnatural designing of the houses nowadays, the thermal breaks which are natural are also hindered at various areas. The areas include the ones which are broken for different purposes like electricity ducts, plumbing etc.
Now that we have known the amazing benefits of insulation, we should also know what the criteria to choose it. When you are choosing the insulation, its R-value should be analyzed. Now what is R-value? As the letter ‘R’ suggests, it stands for Resistance and R-value is the resistance shown towards the flow of heat. The R-value is directly proportional to the amount of insulation. Therefore, more the R-value, better the insulator and ultimately better the thermal break. These materials should be used at places from where the heat enters the house or at the joints.
Moreover, you can also increase the efficiency of these thermal breaks in home by locating the transfer points on areas which receive less sunlight.
But now the most important question arises is how to fir thermal breaks in an already constructed home? Here is what all you can do –
- The roof attracts the maximum amount of heat so paint it in a light colour. After that layer it with perlite which will act as a thermal breaker.
- Walls also bring a great amount of heat, so for that paint them with heat-reflective paints which are good in quality.
- When you are using air conditioners in homes, you should seal the room by applying a layer of high-density rock wool on the outer side of the wall. This will act as a thermal break and will prevent the heat. Also, mandatorily keep the air conditioners or coolers away from the direct heat from the sun.
- If you have windows with aluminium frames, use insulating shades for them.
With all these techniques of thermal breaks in home, you definitely avoid the high electricity bills in the summer season, which has always been a problem. Stay cool and comfortable!
