ᐅ Install insulation now or spend the next 40 years ordering coal?
Created on: 24 Aug 2015 18:29
C
Chef Boss
Hello, friends of good spirits!
Reading through the topics here, I wonder why no one comes to the most economical conclusion at all:
-- Instead of saving money by investing in expensive and environmentally harmful insulation materials, why not simply heat with coal...?
Let’s see how far this idea gets in terms of calculations: Insulation for a typical single-family house costs about 20,000 EUR (approximately 21,500 USD).
According to the claims in contractors’ brochures, this “pays off” usually after about 16 years... because:
-- You then have lower heating costs, but still some. Let’s assume half the costs.
How much coal can you order for the same amount of money that the insulation costs alone?
-- Based on experience, depending on the construction type, heating a single-family home with coal costs about 500-1000 EUR (approximately 540-1,080 USD) per year.
-- That means you could heat with coal for 20 to 40 years with the same money that the contractor takes out of your house for the insulation within a few weeks.
And it’s not like you don’t need to heat at all once the insulation is installed; you save some percentage, but fuel still needs to be purchased.
-- That extends the affordable period of coal heating to 50 years or more.
I bet by then the insulation will have fallen off the wall again. Maybe the house won’t even be standing anymore because it had to be demolished around 10 years after insulation due to mold.
What do you think about that?
Reading through the topics here, I wonder why no one comes to the most economical conclusion at all:
-- Instead of saving money by investing in expensive and environmentally harmful insulation materials, why not simply heat with coal...?
Let’s see how far this idea gets in terms of calculations: Insulation for a typical single-family house costs about 20,000 EUR (approximately 21,500 USD).
According to the claims in contractors’ brochures, this “pays off” usually after about 16 years... because:
-- You then have lower heating costs, but still some. Let’s assume half the costs.
How much coal can you order for the same amount of money that the insulation costs alone?
-- Based on experience, depending on the construction type, heating a single-family home with coal costs about 500-1000 EUR (approximately 540-1,080 USD) per year.
-- That means you could heat with coal for 20 to 40 years with the same money that the contractor takes out of your house for the insulation within a few weeks.
And it’s not like you don’t need to heat at all once the insulation is installed; you save some percentage, but fuel still needs to be purchased.
-- That extends the affordable period of coal heating to 50 years or more.
I bet by then the insulation will have fallen off the wall again. Maybe the house won’t even be standing anymore because it had to be demolished around 10 years after insulation due to mold.
What do you think about that?
We have already gone through this calculation many times... Even upgrading insulation from a thermal performance level T9 to T8 pays off after about 20 to 30 years.
Simply put: an uninsulated old building has a heating energy demand of 450 kWh per m² (42 kWh per ft²). For a 100 m² (1,076 ft²) house, that's 45,000 kWh per year. This would cost around €2,604 annually for gas.
If you fully insulate the house for €20,000 (which I find quite reasonable), the heating energy demand drops to 50 kWh per m² (5 kWh per ft²), so 5,000 kWh per year. That would cost approximately €394 per year for gas.
Even considering compound interest at 3%, the payback period is 10.37 years.
The typical depreciation period for a house is 70 years.
QED.
... even if the insulation costs €40,000, it still pays off.
Simply put: an uninsulated old building has a heating energy demand of 450 kWh per m² (42 kWh per ft²). For a 100 m² (1,076 ft²) house, that's 45,000 kWh per year. This would cost around €2,604 annually for gas.
If you fully insulate the house for €20,000 (which I find quite reasonable), the heating energy demand drops to 50 kWh per m² (5 kWh per ft²), so 5,000 kWh per year. That would cost approximately €394 per year for gas.
Even considering compound interest at 3%, the payback period is 10.37 years.
The typical depreciation period for a house is 70 years.
QED.
... even if the insulation costs €40,000, it still pays off.
If you really want to heat with coal, that’s your choice. And in summer, you take the briquettes and stack them as thermal insulation in front of the exterior walls, or how? (Black Castle) 😉 Don’t forget that a year isn’t just winter when heating is needed. In summer, insulation works the other way around, keeping the heat outside. Also, don’t forget in your clever cost calculation that heating only with coal requires a lot of coal, which then has to be stored. Costs: coal shed xxxx€, larger property because more space is needed for the shed xxxx€ 🙄 , coal produces ash, and ash means waste, and waste means additional costs. I could go on like this for hours. And of course, the labor that Musketier already mentioned.
Chef Boss schrieb:
How much coal could you buy with the money that just the insulation alone costs?
-- Based on experience, a single-family house requires between 500 and 1000 EUR per year, depending on the construction method. With good insulation, that sounds about right.
-- That equals 20 to 40 years of heating with coal, using the same amount of money that the contractor earns for installing the insulation in just a few weeks. 45,000 kWh/year x 0.055 EUR/kWh = 2,475 EUR + delivery + storage costs.
Bet you the insulation will have already fallen off the wall by then? Or maybe the house won’t even be standing anymore because it was demolished 10 years after the insulation was installed due to mold issues. If the insulation pays off in less than 5 years compared to coal heating—including storage, transport costs, and the calculated labor costs for heating—then the insulation will still be as good as new.
You might have mold problems in the uninsulated house, yes. In the insulated house, the temperature at the interior side of the exterior walls is significantly higher, so condensation and thus mold are much less likely.
What do you think about this? Why not just move into a used, older motorhome and spend the winter in the south? That really saves money! And if you want fresh air: roll down the windows and hit the highway. It creates a fantastic air exchange rate.
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