This idea that there's not a focus on insulation in the west seems kinda strange to me.
Usually that means a focus on less energy usage. That frequently doesn’t align with lower cost or optimal solution. For example, buying a 95% efficient boiler for my home would cost significantly more over its useful life when you account for capital costs, retrofit for exhaust, and operational/maintenance expense (efficient units require annual inspection and maintenance via service contract). 80% results in more fuel consumption, but significant lower TCO.
In commercial or larger buildings, the obsession with sealing windows introduces lots of waste. The cost of more heating efficiency is more A/C days.
Also, the practices around construction have changed, driven partially by “efficiency” to build boxes with no passive ventilation. If you go into a well-designed circa 1910 building like a school, office and other inhabited spaces had higher ceilings, higher windows, etc that permitted passive ventilation. My house in upstate NY is like this... we use air conditioning for <20 days a year, and our extra heating costs are negligible. My neighbor’s circa 1995 house is a modern series of interconnected boxes — they have to run AC from June-September because there is no effective ventilation.
My big “beef” is that assumptions that require active, intelligent building management and maintenance have their own risks. These are hard to quantify and thus discounted.
Case in point: I worked for a decade in a building with professional management and all sorts of efficiency programs where chronic issues like a leaking roof were ignored for 30 years. In theory, the HVAC did a great job of moisture control. In reality, there was 3 feet of water on the roof. (Water wins) Point being, budgets drive suboptimal behavior.
In my personal case, my house was designed with features that permit user-controlled airflow and thermal flow. It has modern windows, enhanced attic ventilation, etc that improve performance. Many buildings are not and are dependent on active ventilation to be livable or mold-free.
The effect is indeed that all new buildings (and renovations that involve some kind of constructing new volumes) have improved massively in energy consumption. Still, we have such a massive amount of old buildings with next to none insulation that get renovated so slowly that it will take a long time to actually make a decent dent in reducing our climate footprint.
But there's definitely a good focus on improving our buildings. Main issue with these new buildings is no longer having decent insulation to keep heating costs down but making sure they don't overheat when there's good weather, and ventilating them properly. This is also part of the score calculation but in my experience not sufficiently highlighted.
* https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...
Matt Risinger, a general contractor in Austin, Texas, has a lot of good videos on the topics:
* https://www.youtube.com/c/MattRisinger/videos
Even if you can't use the same techniques that he does (and pay for some of the premium products), it may be possible to still use some of the general theory / principles.
Betters resources with real science can be found at
Though certainly, if you're going to do a build yourself, research any specific products to see if they meet your needs, functionally and monetarily.
* He tends to build on the higher end of things, and has clients that are willing to pay. Of course he's currently building his own new home, and doing things the way he's talked about.
* He's in a warm-humid climate (US Climate Zone 2). Plenty of things I wouldn't do exactly the same since I'm in Canada.
But Joe Lstiburek was born and raised in Canada, and lives in the north-east, and he's saying many of the same things when it comes to building science:
Additionally, to my knowledge, Matt isn't originating any of these ideas, he's just implementing them.
I don't mean to be so hard on Matt, I excitedly watch almost every new video of his and I'm excited there are people out there making building science more accessible. I just wish he'd so a slightly better job differentiating between shilling and presenting information.
He's fairly open about this. He was recently on the Essential Craftsman Podcast and he talks about trying to educate and pass on knowledge:
Then we can talk r-values, zoning rules, permitting and planning.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a technophile, I watch American construction shows, and I bought a bunch of books on renovation at the same time as the condo, but it’s only a small part of what has to be done.