Measure the average width of your windows and keep this in mind when ordering rolls of bubble wrap. If a roll is too narrow, the wrap won't cover your window panes. Far better to order wider rather than narrower.
You can cut down on cutting and avoid having to piece sheets together by ensuring the wrap you are ordering is wide enough. Order wrap that has large bubbles in it. Large bubbles create a protective layer while still letting in light. Think twice before ordering perforated wrap. Some rolls come with perforated sections that can easily be torn off the roll, which makes working with panels even easier.
But if you order perforated, make sure you know the length height of each piece. Buying rolls that are perforated for easy separation of panels may seem like a good idea, but most rolls separate at lengths of every 12".
Unless your windows aren't very tall, this is undesirable. The whole idea of using bubble wrap is ease-of-use and not having to tape, so why have to cut extra pieces or have to piece together or tape together panels that aren't long enough? Bubble wrap on the roll is available in different widths 12"—24" and different lengths, usually from ' to While some prefer to use pieces of used wrap, it is recommended to use new wrap to get the best insulation value.
A double-paned window covered in bubble wrap. Nice and snug for winter! Depending on your needs, you may opt for non-perforated bubble wrap because you need to cover taller windows. If so, use a pair of sharp scissors sharpen them, if necessary, before you begin cutting, to reduce tearing to cut panels to fit.
Sheets of bubble wrap are sturdier than the standard thin plastic in the window kits. Because the wrap has more stiffness, it is much easier to work with and cut than thin plastic that sticks together and sticks to you because of static. Heat losses with and without bubble wrap for 1 sqft of window are:. If you use a more expensive fuel like propane, fuel oil, or electricity, the savings will be correspondingly more.
Here is my Rough Performance Test. Some interesting work done by students at LIU on insulation value of packing materials. Probably not exactly applicable to windows, but interesting. There have been a few questions on whether bubble wrap is effective in reducing unwanted heat gain in the summer. The answer is that it does help some, but there are probably better approaches.
The bubble wrap adds insulation, so just as this added insulation helps to reduce heat loss from the warm room to the cold outside in the winter, it also helps to reduce heat gain from the hot outside to the cool room in the summer, and that is good and helps the room run cooler. But, heat gain also comes from the sun shining right through the window and the bubble wrap and then being absorbed when it hits a surface in the room.
In the winter, this direct absorption of solar radiation is a good thing in that its free heat gain -- its one of the nice features of bubble wrap that it allows the sun to shine right through it and get beneficially absorbed in the room. But, in the summer this direct absorbtion of solar radiation in the room is a negative and its a big part of summer heat gain for windows that get a lot of direct sun. For summer heat gain with windows that get direct sunlight its really important to prevent the sunlight from shinning through the window and into the room.
The best way to do this is to stop the sunlight outside the window by shading the window on the outside in some way. The shading can be things like shade trees or bushes, shade screen which still allows some light into the room, but blocks most of the heat gain , or completely opaque shades on the outside of the window that block all of the sun.
If its not possible to shade the window on the outside, than another approach is to place a reflective surface like a shade just inside of the window with the reflective side facing the window. This reflects much of the sun right back out the window so it is not absorbed and converted to heat inside the room.
Surfaces like aluminum foil or a reflective white paint are good at reflecting sunlight back out the window. The section on passive cooling has a lot of ideas and schemes for reducing summer heat gain. People throw out bubble-wrap every day, and any modern product packaging is unthinkable without it. You can find it in almost any product's package, which is excellent because reusing and recycling is a good cause as well.
Wrapping material with less space between bubbles is generally performing better as it holds more heat. So if you want maximum performance, try to find and select pieces of bubble wrap with bigger bubbles. Homes with single glazed windows, especially in cold climates, would experience the full effect of this simple heat loss prevention technique.
Although windows provide our homes with warmth and light, they can also be a significant weak spot in your home's thermal efficiency profile.
You can cut down utility bills almost in half by applying ordinary bubble-wrap packing material on your windows to keep the heat in. It is easy and fun to install, a few minutes per window is more than enough. Yes, it does! We have tested the bubble wrap insulation on north-facing, single-glazed windows to see if it would prove to be a good insulator. Gary from BuilditSolar also tested bubble wrap insulation performance , and he was genuinely amazed by the results, simplicity, and short payback period.
For an deg-day climate northern US , and single glazed windows, the bubble wrap increases the R value from about R1 to about R2. This cuts the heat loss from the window in half.
You can buy your own bubble wrap. It's inexpensive, but you'll save money if you salvage it. Furniture stores will have extra bubble wrap. Any large department stores will probably be swimming in the stuff.
Call around to your local merchant friends. See if they can help.
0コメント