Frequently Asked Questions

As the name suggests, triple glazing has three panes of glass, adding a second insulating layer for additional warmth compared to the more traditional double glazing. At the Warm House Company, we only offer Triple Glazing as we build High Performing Homes, and the windows are often the weakest link in the building envelope.

With Triple Glazing you have improved thermal performance (keeping you warmer), improved solar gain management (two layers of low-E glass) and significant reduction in sound transmission due to the combination of the higher-performing glass assembly and the improved window frame performance. This means your home is quiet inside, so you can nap while your neighbour is mowing their lawns or having a party. Our window and door frames are all constructed of PVC with an insulating value more than double that of thermally broken aluminium joinery.

Controlling the flow of air into and out of your building is the single largest contributor (after insulation) to improving your home’s thermal performance. This critical component transforms your home to a safe haven from dust and airborne allergens and irritants. The control layer used to do this is called the Airtightness Layer. This Airtightness Layer helps keep the home at a consistent temperature and also helps keep your home quieter inside (when coupled with triple glazing) as well.

This does not prevent you from opening windows, nor does it mean you won’t be able to breathe properly with the windows shut. The Airtightness Layer ensures that when you heat the air in your home, it’s not lost through the building walls, windows, doors, wall outlets, light fittings, etc. Your home will have an Air Change per Hour (ACH) rating of 1 or better. A traditional home will typically have an ACH of 5 or more. That means your home will be no less than 80% more efficient than a typical home in retaining the heating you paid for inside your home.

A balanced ventilation system provides fresh, clean air (from the outside, not attic space) into your home and removes both moisture and stale indoor air. Using a Heat Recovery Unit, the heat generated inside your home (from people, pets, appliances and your activities like cooking and showering) is used to raise the temperature of incoming fresh air, or cool it depending on the season.

As a result, your heating system is not required to work as hard to maintain your desired room temperature, as the air entering your home is a few degrees cooler than your home’s internal temperature, not zero degrees as it might be in the depths of winter.

There are several types of insulation in your home – polystyrene (MaxRaft slab edge and underslab), timber (your wood framing, trusses and bracing) and fibrous insulation (Knauf insulation). We use nogless framing to ensure the highest value insulation (Knauf) makes up the majority of your wall construction. For most homes, timber framing (R1.2) makes up more than 35% of the total framing.

The role of insulation is to slow heat losses from a building, remembering that heat goes to cold (cold does not transfer to heat). At the Warm House Company, we use a double layer of insulation, with R4.2 in our walls and R1.2 in our internal service cavity, with a combined installed insulation value of R5.4 and a whole-of-wall assembly value of approximately R4.5. This well exceeds the recently amended NZ Building Standard of R2.0. This insulation, coupled with an airtight layer with balanced ventilation, is what makes a Warm House.

A building’s performance depends on all elements of the building working together to create a warm and healthy home – that is why we combined these systems together to create our high performing Warm Houses.