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timmmay
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  #604366 3-Apr-2012 10:30
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I can't open the link, but I had wool pumped into my ceiling a few years back. It was a heck of a lot better than nothing, but when I put pink batts on top it made a pretty big difference.

I had a builders labourer put the pink batts in. He didn't do a great job, for example my old house has sarking and wallpaper in clumps and instead of cleaning it out and laying the insulation properly he just went over it, leaving heat to escape. I'm going to do a few session of a couple of hours each to tidy up the insulation, but it's already made a big difference. Gap in insulation really do waste a lot of heat.

If you have downlights then insulation is almost a waste of time. In the trade they're called "chimneys", as all the heat goes straight up them. According to consumer if you have one downlight, even a sealed downlight, you need to put 89% more heat into the room to keep it warm, and four downlights means you need to put in 184% more heat - ie your heating bill almost TRIPLES. I took my downlights out and replace them with standard lights on the ceiling, it made a difference, and they look good.



Jaimita
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  #604377 3-Apr-2012 10:44
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Downlight and insulation don't go together very well. Many downlights need a gap in the insulation of 50cm around the downlight for fire safety reasons. However there are types of downlights now that you can insulation right up to the downlight.

timmmay
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  #604389 3-Apr-2012 11:03
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CA rated downlights are Closed and insulation can be Abutted. The figures I gave are for closed abutted types. Incidentally closed doesn't actually mean closed, it means less than 5% of the area of the downlight is open. So even the best CA rated downlights let a lot of heat out.

You can get downlights you can insulate over, but they're expensive, $80 each. Check out this thread for info

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=87436

Four of the RS rated downlights (which many NZ homes have) mean you need to spend more than triple the money on heating to keep the room the same temperature.

Consumer test results here - membership required: http://www.consumer.org.nz/reports/recessed-downlights/test-results



Batman

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  #645281 23-Jun-2012 22:09
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update:

everyone's quoted me $3600 upwards after discount until i found southtile otago ...

$1650 all up.

now my feet are warm and the heatpump no longer struggles

WOW

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