Bradford Gold is a popular NZ brand of insulation that was used extensively during Government home insulation promotions.
Bradford Gold
The benefits of insulating your home have been well publicised, most recently thought the “Warm Up New Zealand” campaign, designed to ensure that New Zealand residencies met with the highest standards of energy efficiency, health and comfort. But which is the most suitable insulation for your home? There are many products available, the most common being GreenStuf, Pink Batts and Bradford Gold.
Though there are three main reasons to insulate, having a clear idea on what the insulation is primarily designed to do is important in choosing the correct insulation. A professional installer will very quickly be able to determine which the best product for your home is, especially if able to perform a site visit. The most common reasons to insulating a home in NZ are reducing heating bills, reducing damp (water vapour is condensed out of the air on heat differentials. Heat differentials are vastly reduced with insulation) and easing respiratory complaints, most commonly, asthma. The market leading brands of insulation, including Bradford Gold, all work on these three aspects of home comfort, but with subtle, yet important differences.
Economic Benefits of Installing Bradford Gold Insulation
Bradford Gold Insulation can reduce the heat lost through walls by some 50%. Considering that 29% of all household electricity bills are spent on heating open spaces, this represents a saving of 15% of energy bills per year. On an average New Zealand electricity bill of over $2,000, the average saving is $300 a year. This means, with a lifespan of Bradford Gold insulation of around 70 years, the potential savings alone mean the price of installing Bradford Gold is a straightforward question. The Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (EECA) has set a target of 20% energy bills saving for a household, and simply by insulating, this can be achieved. The 15% saving already mentioned is simply the start. By ensuring that there is a much smaller fluctuation in temperature throughout the home, the use of de-humidifiers, heaters and air conditioning systems in summer can all be significantly reduced. Also, by retaining heat throughout the day, homeowners can switch their heating to heat the property during the day, and not the night, when energy use is cheaper. These factors combined will often reduce a household’s annual energy bill by over the target 20%.
As a return on investment, this means that the cost of buying insulation material and having it installed can be completely recouped within 2-4 years, and on a guaranteed lifespan of 70 years, installing Bradford Gold in your Northland home represents an excellent investment.
Why Install Bradford Gold in your home?
Any home built in New Zealand before 1987 will need extra cavity wall or loft insulation, as before this time, very few homes were built with any form of insulation at all. This has resulted in not just poor energy efficiency, but in some cases, poor health. New Zealand’s surprisingly high asthma rates, and even the significantly high winter death rate, has been linked directly to cold, damp homes throughout the nation. These reasons, along with the dedication to a more energy efficient New Zealand, were the driving forces behind the recent campaign, and some 250,000 homes have seen the benefits as a result. With health issues resulting from poorly insulated homes costing New Zealand around $400 per person per year, the benefit to the government of running such a scheme are clear. They should be equally clear to individual households too.
Bradford Gold insulation comes with an industry leading 70 year warranty, guaranteeing it not only against degradation, but also against mould, shrinking or packing down, such is the quality of the material. Bradford Gold insulation is made from high quality glass wool, rolled into sheets, making it an easy insulation product to install. Tested and improved over three decades, Bradford Gold is a high performing insulation material which meets the highest standards in New Zealand insulation, both in terms of performance and safety. Cutting heat loss, reducing condensation and reducing greenhouse emissions, it is one of New Zealand’s market leading insulation products.
The R-Rating of Bradford Gold (the R-value of a material explains how good it is at preventing thermal transfer), is an industry high 6, means that choosing Bradford Gold gives you the best possible thermal insulation available to New Zealand home owners. Lower R-Ratings are available from Bradford for specific conditions, and a trained installer will be able to quickly recommend the correct level of insulation for those occasions where maximum insulation is not required.
Health Benefits of Bradford Gold Insulation
Where Bradford Gold really stands out is through the specific sensitivity to allergy suffers. Having partnered with the Sensitive Choice Asthma Foundation, Bradford Gold has been designed to ensure that the damp and dusty conditions often found in uninsulated homes are reduced as much as possible. With over 600,000 asthma suffers in New Zealand, allergens and asthma triggers are a serious problem in many homes. The bio-soluble glass wool construction of Bradford Gold means that it does not trigger asthma, and any fibres ingested are completed broken down in the body within 10 days, making it the only choice for suffers. As well as being designed not to exacerbate existing respiratory conditions, Bradford Gold actually reduces the conditions that trigger respiratory complaints within the home. It does this by reducing the temperature differences within the home, for example between the air and the walls, condensation is reduced. Condensation and internal humidity encourage mildew, mould and even dust mites, all of which can cause or aggravate respiratory complaints.
Rumours of the safety of using glass wool have been in circulation for over 20 years, leading to some of the most extensive research of any household product. The World Health Organisation has shown that there are no health risks involved with using Glass wool in the home, and the further work done to ensure that Bradford Gold is not only safe but works to improve the conditions conducive to good health means that there are no safer insulation products available.
Bradford Gold Material Quality
Bradford Gold is also a safe choice, meeting the highest building standards in New Zealand. It does not ignite or burn, instead, providing a fire retardant layer to prevent the spread of fire through a home. Meeting the highest New Zealand building codes and BRANZ appraisals, Bradford Gold insulation is industry leading in ensuring that whilst the house is insulated for temperature and noise, there are no possible adverse effects on the household.
Studies have shown that 35% of all heat lost through the home are through the roof, with a further 25% through the walls and floor. In timber framed New Zealand homes, the cavities in walls, ceilings and especially under the floor are usually pretty thin. The high R-Rating of Bradford Gold means that despite the potentially small spaces available for insulation, a significant difference to heat loss can be made. Even a thin covering can have a marked effect on heat loss, and therefore, wasted money.
Installing Bradford Gold in your home
Although installing Bradford Gold is relatively straight-forward due to its flexible, soft nature, it is strongly advised that a qualified fitter does the instillation. Small gaps or spaces between insulation sheets can massively reduce the insulating properties of any insulation product. A 5% gap in the insulation cover can result in a 50% reduction in the effectiveness of insulating your home – resulting in a false economy, as the reduction to your heating bills will be 50% less – a significant amount over the course of 70 years.
It is therefore recommended that a professional installer is used to install Bradford Gold in order to get the best return on investment. This is especially relevant as poorly installed insulation will not only result in a significant reduction in the heat retaining properties of the project, but also as the lifespan of the insulation will be greatly increased, reducing the need, and cost, of investigating, repairing and even replacing the insulation, instead, allowing complete confidence in the insulation.
