Underfloor Insulation and the Summer Tile Chill Factor

A couple of years ago we decided to get underfloor insulation installed under our house. With a raised and fairly exposed underfloor, and with winter approaching, and barely a rug or carpet in the entire house (the floors are all either tiled or laminate) we knew that we’d be better off with the floor insulated. I’d done some reading up on it before hand, and it made sense to me how it all works. The gist of it is as follows: Flooring material (like the above mentioned tiles, laminate floor boards, and timber too for that matter) are inherently poor insulators. So if it’s freezing outside, you can expect your un-insulated floor to be pretty cold as well, even if you warm up the house. If you carpet your floor, the winter chill will probably be less noticeable, but just stand still for a few minutes and ask yourself, is the floor warm, or is it cold? It will be cold if it’s cold outside, even if the heating’s on in the house.
Anyways back to my story. So we Googled for underfloor insulation and found Pricewise Insulation, an insulation company that seem to sell pretty much every insulation product under the sun. One of the brands they sell is GreenStuf, which is made from polyester, and is (according to Pricewise Insulation) so clean and itch-free that you could pretty much make your bed out of it!
I measured up my house and worked out how many backs of the green stuff that we’d need, and ordered it – a little truck came and unloaded the bags the following day. I also organised for a professional insulation installer to come and install the insulation batts for me. He did an excellent job of it. Greenstuf insulation isn’t like normal glasswool, which (from more reading on Pricewise website) is typically shoved up between the floor joists and then kept in place with strapping of some kind. GreenStuf is actually stapled to the sides of the joists.
The effect of having underfloor insulation installed was noticeable, but not dramatically so. We’ve got a combustion heater in the lounge room, and we definitely noticed that the floor in the surrounding area heated up nicely when the heater was in operation. Even more interesting however were the effects we noticed this last summer.
The main air conditioner is wall mounted and blows cold air straight into and through the kitchen area, which is tiled (and of course beneath that, insulated.) On a warm day, with the air-con running, the floor in the middle of the kitchen is absolutely freezing, so much that it’s uncomfortable to walk on it with bare feet. Hot air rises so cold air must settle? I figured that the downward angle of the air-con blast from a few meters away, combined with the cold air sits below hot air, combined with the underfloor insulation factor – must all be contributing to this interesting phenomenon.
Chill factor aside, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend underfloor insulation to anyone with a raised timber floor.  

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