I know a little about the higher-end US renter occupants. They DO look into the utility bill history. It is easier to rent an identical place for more `rent' if the utility bills are less. Higher-end renters look at the cost per year.
It is hard to rent a place if the heat bill in January is double one months rent.
Heating costs are often advertised in the "For Rent" ad, here. Odds of getting a `better' renter go up a lot. "Good Renters" are worth a lot of long-term money, here.
They could super-insulate those units like heck, then charge more rent. The occupant would pay less per year. The landlord would make more. UK would send less money to elsewhere.
My attic is about R-150. About 45" of cellulose. It is cheap and easy to do that. G- [ Parent ]
So, I'm going to guess you don't / can't use your attic at all? I tend to pop into mine all the time, mostly when running antenna cabling for my ham radio addiction... Or perhaps you leave a pathway and just bury everything else? I am also guessing the thickness has to taper down quite a bit toward the eaves, so you still have an air gap for air to flow up through the attic?
I've thought about further insulation, but really wondered how much better I'd get. My A/C already barely runs - heck, I have a programmable thermostat and even on the hottest days of summer (100+ degF) my house won't get from roughly 76 when it sets back at 6AM to the 85 setback temp. By the time I get home at 5PM, it'll maybe be 82 at highest. And that's with about 6-8" of Rockwool.
But the attic is an absolute furnace, through which - naturally - my HVAC ducts run, hence my interest in the radiant barriers. Perhaps I'll add more insulation as well, now! I have a very high-pitched roof, maybe I can build a sort of raised walkway to get through and insulate under that... [ Parent ]
I ran more outlets than could ever be needed, plus 2 extra 110V wires and a 220V from near the breaker box to the attic with plenty of wire to work with, 2 or 3 sets of phone lines to every room (back in the day of dial-up), 2 sets of co-ax cable vision wires... Wire was cheap at the time. The phone and cable wires are in a box near the access hole (14x18"?) for switching around which is which. I hope to never put more than my torso up there ever again. Then I blew it in. Cheap and easy. Made a huge difference. I didn't intend it to be that deep. Made an error in the calculations somewhere. Just blew it deeper and deeper until I used all I bought.
After all the wires were installed, I had a company do the walls. Not easy.
Rock wool is 'not compatable' with blown in. They tell me blown in crushes the rock wool or fiberglass flat, so do not include it in calculations.
If nothing else, everyone with only 8" should put the R-38 Pink Panther over the existing insultaion. Also cheap and easy is the space between the basement walls and first story floor is a large heat loss that few people insulate. G- [ Parent ]
One large chunk of the rental market is students who are (a) poor and (b) not yet aware of the bills issue by and large [I wasn't] and (c) not that careful with the property anyway so expensive and fragile stuff ain't going to last...
Rgds
Damon[ Parent ]
