How can I reduce the impact of extreme weather on my home heating bills?
ISOVER specialises in insulation, airtightness & dry lining solutions and our goal is to always provide our customers with energy-saving and cost-saving solutions to meet the challenges people are experiencing when trying to heat (or cool their homes).
Did You Know?
We have seen man-made influences on energy efficiency and uptake in insulation usage (such as improved thermal regulations, improved acoustic regulations, and the increased cost of heating homes) but this year has also shown us another factor in terms of our customer's decision about whether to install increased insulation (such as our Metac and Comfort high-performance insulation ranges), address the airtightness or their home with the Vario system or deploy the OPTIMA Dry Lining solution in a renovation scenario.
Ireland has experienced both extremes in terms of cold and warm weather this year, and it begs the question of whether this year has been an outlier in terms of weather, or whether it’s a pattern that Irish people will have to become used to (again).
Irelands Adverse Weather
Ireland has seen adverse weather in the past. In 1961, Hurricane Debbie visited our shores with winds of up to 195km/h. The winter of 1963 was the coldest of the 20th century with a large Scandinavian anticyclone bringing bitterly cold easterly winds over Ireland. Warm weather events also spring up – with high temperatures between 20 degrees and 32.3 degrees recorded within the past 12 years. But Ireland has seen a lot milder weather than doesn’t reach either extreme since the turn of the century, with only 2 or 3 weather event outliers for cold and warm weather in the past 18 years.
So while this summer saw the need for a hosepipe ban due to the heat & drought, when only 3 months previously we experienced large volumes of snowfall and accumulation, it is very hard to determine if this is a once off, or if it is a portent of things to come in future years!
One thing that can be determined is that whether Irish homes have to ensure the extremes in weather that were experienced in 2018, or the milder weather that was enjoyed for the first 15 years of this century, there is increasing pressure on fossil fuel stocks and thus, on the price of keeping homes hot or cool (weather depending). Earlier this year we explored how insulation can be used to keep homes cool in warm weather, and it is well documented by regulatory bodies such as the SEAI that insulation is a key player in ensuring the cost of heating your home comes down and stays down. So whatever weather may be on the horizon for Ireland, it is definitely worth considering insulating your home to ensure your home is protected against weather extremes, and that in milder weather your heating and cooling costs are kept as low as possible.
What Do We Offer?
ISOVER offers a number of insulation products and renovation solutions such as our Metac roll, Optima Dry Lining System and Vario Airtightness & Moisture Control System which can combine to significantly reduce the cost of heating or cooling your home.
Weather expert Gerald Fleming recently predicted what weather will be like in 2050 – and based on that prediction, it may indeed be wise to improve the performance of your home sooner rather than later – don’t wait until 2050 to start saving money and reducing fossil fuel reliance, in the face of potential further extreme weather conditions.