Living in an attic apartment can be the best – or the worst
03/07/2018
Living in an attic apartment can be the best – or the worst
03/07/2018

New technologies and new materials have caused the need to a new approach to facades, the envelopes of our buildings, and have resulted in major changes in the construction of buildings. Facades have become increasingly daring and carry an increasingly higher aesthetic value. Designing the house of our dreams, we embellish our facades with glass, stone and wood as well as with various colorful paints and finishes. However, the appearance of a building has very little to do with good indoor living quality. Especially if the materials installed do not contribute to a satisfactory functional value.

What can we do to avoid making mistakes?
Let us consider, for example, glass cladding. Indeed, glass performs excellently when it comes to supplying our indoor space with light and sun rays. Also, it protects us from rain and wind. On the other hand, glass claddings are not doing a good job in maintaining the desired hot or cool indoor temperature. On the contrary, glass cladding is leading us to temperature extremes that greatly deteriorate our indoor living conditions.

What does this mean?
Simply – that neither paints and finishes nor glass or other modern cladding are automatically insulating heat transfer. Regardless of the fact that we clad the external side of our building with a layer, this layer does not automatically contribute significantly to the quality of indoor living. We can compare this layer’s effect with wearing a winter coat in summer or taking a walk through the snow in a t-shirt.

Paints, finishes, glass, stone and other modern cladding elements are not automatically insulating heat transfer. They enhance the aesthetic appearance of the house, but if left unprotected, they do not contribute to good indoor living quality.“

Therefore, planning a facade is not only about its appearance. Rather, we should consider the facade as a system that will protect us from environmental influences. If we want to avoid the occurrence of thermal bridges, it is crucial that each element of the building’s envelope is properly executed.
While thermal bridges are often mistakenly associated with old buildings, typically built without thermal insulation, they can cause even worse problems in newer buildings. Even though these are, generally, well insulated, thermal bridges occur as a consequence of poor design and badly implemented details, leaving us with lower energy efficiency. Additionally, thermal bridges also result in poor living conditions, as air moisture condenses on cold interior surfaces and enables the growth of mold. This is especially true in buildings with airtight windows with no mechanical or natural ventilation.

Steps to a perfect facade
Today, it is hard to imagine a facade without thermal insulation, as the global trend of contemporary construction is heading in the direction of sustainable energy efficient buildings.
If renovating your facade is not an option due to financial or aesthetic reasons – cultural heritage, disagreeing neighbours – a partial solution is the installation of thermal insulation from the inside in order to improve locally the building’s energy efficiency. Unfortunately, we will have to take into account that this option will reduce our useful floor space.
Nevertheless, if you are planning to reconstruct your facade or construct a new building, you should carefully consider all your alternatives. Maximum cost savings and quality of indoor living can only be achieved with high-quality thermal insulation of your building’s envelope. Keeping this in mind, you can embellish your facade with any cladding of your choice, for example stone, thus achieving a much more aesthetic appearance of the building.

FIBRAN solutions
In order to build the building envelope in a simple and natural way, FIBRAN proposes two families of complementary systems for facades: FIBRANgyps NEXT, green color gypsum-based system covered by a glass mat facing and SHERA, white autoclaved cement based system.
The two systems, both of excellent quality and performance, can be combined with FIBRANgeo thermal and acoustic insulation solutions, obtaining customized configurations that respect mandatory regulations requirements and the highest quality and aesthetic standards, meeting the specific project needs.