I have fond memories of growing up in our family home. Watching TV sat in our living room. Heating on, gas fire on and my mother sat on the sofa saying…
“There is a draught in here”
Much to my frustration, my mother would inform us of this mystical draught (that only she had the sensitivity to detect) on an all too regular basis. I on the other hand was always very warm in our mid terraced, single glazed, solid wall home.
Writing this now as someone who has undertaken numerous draught proofing projects. I cannot help but wonder what the value of solving the draught would have been. Experience has taught me that this value is not to be under-estimated. Certainly not hearing my mother banging on about it would have been priceless!!
These savings can be huge!!!
The obvious answer lies in the Energy savings generated through draught proofing. These savings can be huge!!!!. If your building does suffer from draughts, it is unequivocally telling you that it is literally leaking energy.
I have known of organisations where the level of draughts have been so bad they have left their heating on overnight. One particular theatre I worked with would put the heating on the day before the night of the performance, in an attempt to get the theatre to the desired temperature come show time.
This all sounds very ridiculous indeed. And it is incredibly ridiculous! However, if you read enough books on human behaviour you will know that something stupid repeated on a regular basis generally becomes accepted as the norm. We know that Homo Sapiens as a species are immensely stupid, so this behaviour will not be surprising. This is most likely why people like to get someone with “new eyes” to come and examine their operation.
There we go again, another buzzword in one of my blogs! What are these new eyes in any case? Do you get them in the middle aisle at Lidl? One of my mother’s many great sayings was…
“You only get one pair of eyes”
Talk about state the obvious. Where did this "New Eyes" saying come from? Have we progressed to eye transplants? If so, these people must be highly sought after for their “new eyes”?
My experience of draught proofing has taught me that as much as 10-15% of the energy used in heating an area, can be saved through draught proofing. Yes you heard me correctly, 10-15%!!!!!! This does of course depend upon the size of the draught and its location.
I remember returning to the theatre I mentioned earlier, to enquire about the impact of the installed draught proofing. I was pleasantly surprised to find, they were no longer putting the heating on the day before. Therefore, they had literally saved a full days’ worth of heating costs. To be fair this theatre did have external doors I could slide my hand underneath.
Another building I surveyed also had a draught-proofing problem that was masquerading as a heating issue. This building was less than 10 years old and as such, incredibly well insulated. The building boasted a well sized heating system, a filled cavity and good levels of loft insulation. Despite this, the people in the downstairs office felt cold.
Their solution to this was to turn the heating up and plug in a couple of electric heaters.
When I undertook an energy audit of the property, I realised immediately that the misdiagnosed heating issue could be remedied, by installing a draught excluder on the bottom of the office door.
This is a fine example of what draught proofing can achieve. Therefore I will talk through this scenario, bullet point style.
I had staff members in an office that they felt cold in.
Ø Their solution was to turn the heating up, what was the annual cost of this???
Ø They also plugged in 2 x electric heaters, what was the annual cost of this???
Ø My solution was to return the heating to its normal set point, remove the electric heaters and install a draft excluder on the bottom of the office door.
Rather than bore you with the heating calculations. I shall just say that the draft excluder cost £8 and took me less than 10 minutes to install. This example, along with the theatre example, hammers home the value of draught proofing.
Therefore, I advise you not to ignore the gremlin of draught proofing. So if you feel cold, don’t turn your heating up, don’t plug in additional electric heating. Because you may have, you just may have a draught-proofing gremlin!!.
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