Posted October 17, 2019
The World Health Organisation recommends a minimum of 18°C for living areas and 16°C for bedrooms. Yet 30% of New Zealand homes being built today don’t meet these standards, causing many health issues due to cold and damp living environments.
In an uninsulated home, 15% of heat is lost through windows, doors and the floor, 35% through the walls, and 25% through the roof. This is why it makes sense to insulate your entire home, especially if you want to remain comfortable, healthy and save on energy bills.
Around 15% of your home’s heat is lost through the slab the house sits on.
One of the first things that starts the building process of a new home is the slab it sits on. Whilst it’s often the last consideration when thinking about thermal efficiencies and home comforts, the slab is the first place to consider when building an energy efficient home.
With a fully insulated slab, the insulation creates a thermal break between the foundation and the ground around it. This reduces the transfer of energy from the home into the land surrounding the home. If a thermal break isn’t created, you could lose the same amount of heat as you would if you left a window open in winter.
MAXRaft offers New Zealand’s only fully insulated concrete slab to increase the performance of your home from the ground up whilst making it easier to maintain healthy room temperatures and reduce energy and doctor’s bills.
MAXRaft and underfloor heating are a perfect combination
When everything is designed correctly, underfloor heating is not expensive. MAXRaft and underfloor heating are a perfect combination because the fully insulated MAXRaft slab will prevent heat loss at the edge of the slab where 80% of slab heat loss occurs.
All MAXRaft® fully insulated foundations are designed to ensure that the foundation matches the ground type on site, as well as taking into account all load bearing walls and point loads. And it doesn’t matter if you are using a lightweight cladding, exterior bricks or stone cladding, MAXRaft can come up with a solution for you.
The main benefits of MAXRaft include:
MAXRaft provides the same structural integrity as waffle floors, while providing superior insulation. We manufacture and pre-cut all materials for each property section before they are sent to the building site where everything fits together quickly and efficiently like a jigsaw puzzle.
We work closely with architects, engineers and builders and can either handle everything from quote to full design, engineering design to council consent, manufacture, pre-cut to final product install, or prepare everything for your builder to install on site.
MAXRaft® products surpass all building code requirements, with R-values between R4 and R4.5.
We want the consent process to be as easy as possible and have been BRANZ appraised. This is combined with MAXRaft’s PS1 and foundation design service to make the consent process an absolute breeze.
There are items in construction that are replaceable, unfortunately the slab is not one of them. Look at the insulation, living environment and running costs. These areas are where you will find a lot of the benefits moving forward.
Choose good health and comfort and reduce your energy bills; choose a MAXRaft insulated foundation.
