Cold bridges in frame houses

What is a cold bridge, and why should you care? It's simple: if you want a warm house - then the problem of thermal bridges has you concerned. In this article I will address this problem only in the context of frame houses because it is one of the most common types of construction of small suburban houses.

So: you have decided to build a skeleton, and even started to do this, after referring to literature and reading tons of information on the Internet. The most interesting thing is that, in theory, after reading the literature problem which is written and the text should be disappear by itself. However, monitoring the construction sites of frame houses and personal experience say that it is not so.


Okay, so it concerns us, sorted out. Now that's how it looks (I mean he cold bridges). Right when they say that it is better to see once, so take a look at the illustration:


Illustration cold bridge

Shows a red bridge cold. In this case, when assembling the frame on the "platform" of two adjacent panels are assembled is not entirely correct, resulting in extreme stand of such panels were closely pressed to each other. As a result - a small gap between the boards is no insulation will not fit, and the cold air through this gap will be free to enter the premises.

Foreseen in advance such a challenge is quite simple - it was necessary to be highly persistent panels do not close to the end face shear horizontal boards. Then, between two such boards will have a normal period, which can be filled with insulation.

But what happens when the frame is already assembled and detect such an unfortunate mistake? Do not worry - this situation is easily removable with two options. Firstly, if the house only summer residence, it is not worth a worry. Secondly, if you do decide to fix this mistake, then everything is solved by another layer of insulation, which will cover the access of cold air through the cold joints. In our case - just to make the inside horizontal lathing under another layer of insulation (it is horizontal, because the skeleton racks themselves are vertically). This should be done after the fact as the walls will be laid the basic layer of insulation, or then do not pick up.

I am not in any way claim to be a complete knowledge of the problem of thermal bridges (interested in all aspects will always be able to satisfy their curiosity by reading the professional literature), I just want to shed some light on those details, knowledge of which helps to how to prevent errors in advance and save you little time and money. At that decided to do.