34 ms·
In Austria, when you look for housing for sale, you see an insulation rating. Not so in the United States. It just so happens that all the Austrian homes I've
by throwaway13337 6y ago
In Austria, when you look for housing for sale, you see an insulation rating. Not so in the United States.
It just so happens that all the Austrian homes I've been in are much warmer than those in northern US in the winter. American homes are surprisingly cold.
You make what you measure.
- mod 6y agoWouldn't the homes just be as cold as their owners kept them? I don't understand that comparison. If you compared costs to heat, and said American homes were higher-cost, that would make more sense to me.
- throwaway13337 6y agoIt could be that Americans just prefer colder homes. However last winter, my heating bill in my current American home was something like $400 USD/month for maintaining a colder house than I'm used to in Europe. As someone who lived in both places, you can bet cost does play a role.
- kasey_junk 6y agoWow. How big is your place, what heating tech do you use and in what region? That’s wild. For reference my place (in Chicago) costs lest than $60 a month to heat in the dead of winter.
- TuringNYC 6y agoIt depends on a lot of things. I was just $40/mo for me in NYC. However, I lived in an apartment building with only one wall exposed and the other 5 surrounded by apartments/hallway. Further, the apartment was insulated so excessively, we'd open the balcony door and windows in the winter to get rid of stale air. Flip to a house, also in NYC, and the heating bill was 4x for 2x more space...I think mostly because it was a detached home with all sides open.
- rootusrootus 6y agoThat is a serious amount of money just for heating. I keep our house fairly warm and still only spend a quarter of that (I use natural gas). It's not a huge house, but at 3000sf it isn't tiny, either. At $400/mo I'd be looking for a disconnected duct in the crawl space or something. Or maybe it's an old oil furnace or resistive heat? Even then, that's nuts...
- Groxx 6y agoWhat would the "insulation rating" cover? E.g. the R-value of the stuff inside walls, which wouldn't cover windows or gaps or lots of other things, or do they somehow measure the R-value of the house as a whole? Every house and rental I've encountered so far has given me the monthly heating/cooling cost up-front, which has so far been fairly accurate, assuming you hold at an area-normal temperature indoors. And they've all been able to tell me the R-value of the insulation in the walls and roof or attic. If ever it's more than like $100 for a single-family home, you pretty much know the insulation is bad or terrible.
- bleepblorp 6y agoOP is likely referring to documentation required under the EU's energy performance certificates rules. See: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/eu-buildings-factsheets-topics-tree/energy-performance-certificates_en https://ec.europa.eu/energy/eu-buildings-factsheets-topics-t...
- Groxx 6y agoAh. So basically a multi-tier building code that builders/etc certify during their work? Makes sense - I'm not sure if there's an equivalent in USA or not. There are certainly minimums in most/all? places, but I have no idea how much consistency there is. The bigger problem is probably that there are a bunch of old, cheap buildings in places that experienced major housing booms during lax requirements, and those still exist :|
- londons_explore 6y agoIn England at least, energy performance certificates are widely faked. Anything the inspector can't verify they are allowed to estimate. So you get things like "I'm afraid the curtains are closed now, so we can't see the windows, but I estimate they're double glazed".