Insulation in Buildings

Insulation is a new word that has recently entered Turkish as the equivalent of the words isolation of Arabic origin and isolation of French origin. The word insulation, which creates associations close to this definition in almost everyone, appears as a technical concept when it comes to the building sector.

Insulation is a branch of building physics. It examines the necessary measures to be taken to control and regulate the physical movements within a building. It includes materials, solutions, details and applications that aim protection, resistance and even impermeability in the structure against harmful factors such as heat, water, sound and fire.

What is the Purpose of Insulation?

The ability of a building to serve its users in accordance with its purpose of construction and to maintain its value for years depends on the fact that it is well protected against internal and external negative factors. The protection of buildings from internal and external factors is also related to whether they are insulated or not. Insulation aims to protect the building, together with its carrier system and building components, from all these internal and external negative factors and to create healthy and comfortable spaces. Insulation includes measures to protect both the structure and the users. The aim of insulation is to extend the life of the buildings, reduce maintenance costs and create safe, healthy, peaceful and comfortable spaces for the user.

What are the Types of Insulation?

1. HEAT INSULATION
2. WATER INSULATION
3. SOUND INSULATION
4. FIRE INSULATION

What are the Benefits of Insulation?

Insulation, as we mentioned at the beginning, is the correct protection of structures from internal and external factors. Therefore, the first benefit of insulation is on the building. Insulation prevents the harmful effects of external factors on the building, ensures that the building remains strong and safe, and extends the life of the building.

The robustness of the building is of great importance for the life safety of the people using these buildings. In addition, insulation is a necessary application for the comfort and health of users. Protecting people from the damages of external factors is only possible with insulation.

In addition to these, insulation offers economic advantages. The effects of factors that damage the building are seen in the long term as we mentioned at the beginning. However, it is possible to clearly see the saving effect of insulation in the short term. The saving type of insulation is thermal insulation. For this reason, thermal insulation stands out among insulation types. Other types of insulation also offer economic, health and life safety advantages. Prolonging the life of the building, reducing the effects of moisture/humidity, ensuring life safety in case of fire and similar disasters are the prominent factors.

1.THERMAL INSULATION

The phenomenon of insulation in Turkey came to the agenda only in the 1970s with the advertising activities of glass wool producing companies in the sector.

Thermal insulation is the most common and important insulation subject due to its relationship with energy and environment. Its prevalence is due to the fact that it provides savings immediately after the application, hence its economic contribution. Technically, thermal insulation is a process to reduce heat transfer between two environments at different temperatures.

Heat moves from the high-temperature environment to the low-temperature environment. In other words, there is a movement from the heated internal environment to the external environment. In the case of buildings, in uninsulated or insufficiently insulated spaces, the surface temperatures of buildings such as walls and windows are low and hot air moves towards cold surfaces. In order to provide an adequate comfort environment inside, either the lost heat must be compensated by a heating system or heat loss must be reduced.  Reducing heat loss is only possible with thermal insulation. From this point of view, we can call thermal insulation as resistance that limits heat loss in hot environments and heat gain in cold environments.

By making thermal insulation, it is possible to extend the life of the building, to provide healthy, comfortable spaces to the user and to provide great gains in fuel and cooling costs during the building usage phase. A technically made thermal insulation causes us to save money by reducing the cost of heating by 70%. We also protect our health by making thermal insulation.

2.WATER INSULATION

In 1999, after two major earthquakes in succession, new concepts such as richter scale, tsunami and ground survey entered our lives. Corrosion was one of these concepts. The reason for the destruction of many buildings in the earthquake was corrosion, i.e. rusting. The reason for corrosion was the lack of waterproofing. Unfortunately, it is not yet fully understood that water is something that needs to be insulated, even with a very bitter experience.

Waterproofing can basically be defined as works carried out to protect structures from the harmful effects of water and moisture.  The biggest threat in terms of building life and durability is "water". Water infiltrating into the structure causes corrosion of the reinforcements in the bearing parts of the structures, causing their cross-sections to decrease and the load carrying capacity to decrease significantly. In addition, water in the building component freezes in cold seasons and evaporates in hot seasons, leading to deterioration of concrete integrity and formation of cracks.

In addition, sulphates in ground moisture or ground water enter into chemical reactions with the foundation concrete and cause deterioration of the concrete composition and adversely affect the life and strength of the structure. Water also causes the formation of organic substances such as mould, fungus, etc., which are harmful to human health in buildings.

Water infiltrations that cause problems in buildings are generally of external origin. Rain and snow, roof and walls, groundwater and ground moisture seeps into the structure from the parts of the building in contact with the soil. 

3.SOUND INSULATION

Sound insulation basically covers the measures to be taken to minimise the harmful effects of noise on humans. Noise is a collection of unwanted sounds that are irregular in structure, have different frequency components and are generally variable over time. Noise, which we briefly define as disturbing sound, seems to be a natural consequence of urbanisation today.

Especially in areas where urbanisation is unplanned, noise is among the factors that harm human health and comfort. Disturbing noises emitted by a factory in the vicinity, the sound of a clock, violent noise in the residential area around the airport, vendor voices, traffic noises, conversations from neighbours can be perceived as noise in different doses by people and can be disturbing.

In some areas, silence is one of the most important requirements of work. The need for low noise levels in radio broadcasting and music studios, creating a quiet and peaceful environment for patients in a hospital, cutting outside noise in a school are problems that need to be solved during the building construction phase. In order to solve all these problems and to provide a peaceful environment in buildings, it is necessary to combat noise. Basically two methods are used in the fight against noise. Acoustic regulation and sound insulation. Acoustic regulation is the regulation of the reflection time in an indoor environment. Sound insulation is a process to reduce the amount of sounds transmitted through building elements.

4.FIRE INSULATION

In the past, the main materials of buildings were traditional materials such as stone, wood and adobe. Records from the XVth century indicate that houses in Istanbul were generally built of wood, as both the supply and labour of chipped stone was expensive. The fact that Istanbul is located on earthquake faults and is prone to major earthquakes also popularised the use of wood in the following years. Major earthquakes throughout history had encouraged the construction of buildings in Istanbul from wood, which was considered to be more earthquake resistant. Wood was undoubtedly more resistant to earthquakes. However, this situation would confront Istanbulites with another problem: Fire... The city, which had escaped from the earthquake disaster, would fall into the lap of another disaster. Large fires that lasted for days and completely destroyed several neighbourhoods would take their place among the leaves of Istanbul's history.

In the Ottoman Empire, fire-fighting activities were based on certain prohibitions and the extinguishing of fires. The work of extinguishing fires was carried out by the janissaries, and after the abolition of the janissary hearth, by the tulumbacı teams, which could be considered the firefighters of the period. Apart from this, it was thought to take precautions against fires with some prohibitions. In 1554, following a fire that destroyed hundreds of houses and shops, Grand Vizier İbrahim Pasha banned the lighting of fires and lamps at night.

 At that time, the concept of fire insulation was unknown. However, Istanbulites were not completely unaware of the concept of insulation. A brick wall was built between two buildings against fire. This wall, called fire wall, was obligatory. However, this wall was not always enough to prevent disaster. For example, after the proclamation of the Republic, the biggest fire in Istanbul took place in today's Kurtuluş neighbourhood, then called Tatavla. The fire, which spread in a short time, affected an entire neighbourhood and hundreds of houses were burnt to the ground. Many houses were demolished with dynamite to prevent the fire from spreading to Tarlabaşı.

Today, most of the people of Istanbul live in reinforced concrete houses that are much more resistant to fire. However, the danger of fire still exists. The fire precautions taken in Istanbul's past were clearly inadequate. If you ask "But are they adequate today?", the answer will again be "inadequate".