Sustainability Percentage of homes with inadequate insulation by country

[Maciamo]

Living in a home with poor thermic isolation is uncomfortable and costly. It is cold in winter and substantially increases your heating consumption. If you live in places where it gets hot in summer (>30°C) then it can get pretty unbearable inside without good insulation. Even with air conditioning a poorly insulated house or apartment will immediately get hot again once you turn off the AC.

When I was living in Japan poor thermic and noise isolation was one of my most recurrent complaints. In winter it was so cold in the room that I could see my breath when I got up in the morning. In summer it was so muggy that droplets of sweats ran across my face as soon as I entered my house (before turning on the air conditioner).

I asked ChatGPT to give me a list of the percentage of homes with inadequate insulation. Japan is indeed one of the worst developed countries in this regard, but the US is even worse according to ChatGPT.

Percentage of homes with inadequate insulation

• United States : 90%
• Japan : 80%
• China : 70-80%
• Taiwan, Russia & Bulgaria : 60-70%
• South Korea, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Greece & New Zealand : 50-60%
• Spain : 45-50%
• Australia, Croatia, Czechia & Italy : 40-50%
• Canada : 30-40%
• Belgium & Germany : 30-35%
• Austria : 25-30%
• France & Ireland : 25-30%
• United Kingdom : 25%
• Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway & Switzerland : 20-25%
• Denmark : 15-20%
• Finland, Sweden & Iceland : 10-15%

It's not surprising that Americans consume three times more natural gas than British or German people, five times more than French people, and 10 times more than Danish people. Not only would they save a lot of money by isolating their homes, but that would also considerably lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

It's harder to find the data for homes that have no isolation at all

Percentage of homes that have no isolation at all

• China : 30-40%
• Japan, Taiwan, Italy, Spain & Russia : 20-30%
• South Korea : 10-20%
• Australia : 10-15%
• United States : 10%
• Most of Western & Northern Europe : 5-10%

 

[Maciamo]

I have asked ChatGPT for the data for other countries and made a map with everything.

According to this data, the US is one of the worst countries in the world for home isolation. That can be explained by the fact that approximately 90% of homes in the United States are built in wood and only 10% with masonry (bricks or stones), or steel and concrete. The latter two are usually found in older East Coast cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington DC.

At least 30% of US homes are still equipped with single-glazed windows. In Nordic countries, Germany, the Benelux, France, the UK and Ireland, it is less than 10% (and usually closer to 5%). The rest in not all double-glazing though. Triple glazing is found in 30-40% of homes in Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Finland, 20-30% in Iceland, Denmark, Germany, Austria and the Benelux, 15-20% in Estonia and Latvia, 10-15% in Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, and 5-10% in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Russia. Yet in the United States, despite very cold winters in 2/3 of the country, less than 5% of homes in triple glazing. In Europe that's the case only warm (and not very wealthy) countries like Greece and Albania. Even Moldova and Kosovo do better than the US!

Personally I grew up in a house with triple-glazing already in the 1980s. It's so thick that when I practised tennis or basketball against the wall and accidentally hit the window, nothing happened. It just bounced back (even a heavy basketball). I am always incredulous when I see how people break windows with a single punch in American movies and series - even in new ones. That's obviously single glazing. The only buildings I have seen with single glazing in Belgium were historical buildings (castles or listed buildings) where they preserved the old windows on purpose.

 

[Maciamo]

This video explains how and why American houses have such poor insulation.

The comments on YouTube are also interesting. Here are a few.

"I'm from Northern Europe and used to high quality houses (and design), and then I became a homeowner in Texas. A construction home from 2010. Since 80-90% of my electricity bill is keeping the house cool with AC, I was shocked to see things like the front door and other exterior doors had wide and visible gaps between the door and frame, and virtually no form of insulation. Not only letting the cool air escape, but also letting bugs walk in."

"I've been working as a residential energy rater in the South Eastern US for about 7 years now. I would never buy a production house in the US. From inadequate local codes to builders trying to maximize profits, it's a nightmare out there for a prospective buyer. Someday when I have enough money I'll build my over engineered masterpiece of energy efficiency and climate resilience"

"I lived in Europe for 36 years: UK Germany & the Netherlands. I watched my German neighbors build a house from scratch, thinking they were building a bomb shelter. I toured several passive houses in the early 2000’s and was impressed to learn they could be maintained for dollars a month while providing a much healthier standard of living due to the constant supply of fresh air. Europeans wonder at the US building codes as they watch our homes continuously get burned or blown down. I’ve always explained that we did not learn the lesson of the second little pig: don’t built your house out of sticks."


"I once met a Swedish company that built a new, innovative and well-insulated window. They were doing really well on the Swedish market, but just had to roll back their launch from the American market. Why? The CEO told me that the walls on the American houses were so thin they couldn't hold the weight of the windows "


"I can confirm that at least all somewhat new buildings in Germany are insulated like crazy. Last winter we had the natural gas crisis because of Russia's invasion, so we were worried about 10fold prices. Fortunately, we did not need to use the heater once. Our flat was never cooler than 20°C. Other benefits of insulation is noise reduction, which is really nice if you live close to a busy street or near an airport."


"I came from Finland to Michigan in winter and was shocked when I felt the breeze indoors in the first house I visited. Leaky single pane windows in the northern states, what the hell?

I couldn't help noticing other sources of waste: the bus driver left the engine running when he went on a coffee break and my friend didn't even think to stop the engine while fixing his flat tire. One time the stairwell in my dormitory was heated so well that the door handle was literally hot. Even flushing the toilet seemed to use neverending amounts of water. At the university diner I had to bring my own fork, because I got tired of eating with disposable plastic forks."


"I work as an electrician in Switzerland and here I am used to walls, floors of houses and buildings to be made with 30cm (12inches) thick concrete, then everything waterproofed with thick tar based sheets on the outside surfaces of the concrete, then all exterior walls (facades) are insulated with very thick (around 15 inches) either fiberglass, rockwool, xps or polystyrene foam. Then on top of all the tick concrete floors, we put one layer of polystyrene foam(not as thick), this is here we put the heated floor tubing, and then one more concrete layer of top of that, so all floors are thermally and acoustically insulated from each other.
So you get exterior walls that are 20 to 30 inches thick (concrete + insulation).
Oh and the non bearing interior walls are either bricks (yes for real) or double layer drywall with steel framing.
In most cases the only wood you see in construction are the doors or the floor paneling at the very end.

The electricity part, every wires are in special tubing we attach with steel rebar before the concrete is put in, so we have tubes and electrical "boxes" everywhere IN the concrete floor and walls , and we pull the wires when concrete is done. So we have to place every tubes and boxes precisely before the concrete is put it because we cant change it later. If there is a box for an outlet "here", well its embedded in the concrete so it better be the right place.
this way if there is a fire from a wire, no big deal" its in the concrete. And it's 1 wire = 1 tube in most cases. So there are miles and miles of tubes in the concrete joining a bunch of electrical boxes, lamp boxes, switches, etc.


So yes with my experience, seeing house construction in the US is very... weird."

 

[Maciamo]

Ashton and her husband made a series of videos comparing houses in the US and Germany. Americans tend to move house much more often than Europeans. In Germany in particular people tend to buy a house for life. Americans will typically buy what they call "starter home", then sell it for a bigger one, then again for a bigger one, etc. That's why they have a short-term mentality when buying a home and don't really care about the quality of construction. Things do not need to be built to last in the US. I suppose that is also why they neglect insulation.

Here is an interesting comment from someone else who lived in both countries.

"What I learned out of my own experience: we built a home in Germany in 1993 and lived in it untill our son moved in when we left for the US in 2015. Coincidentally we bought a house in the US built in 1993 also and it was shocking to find out the differences of both houses. The house in the US was more expensive but due to the location I guess (the higher the population the more a house costs and I believe this goes for all over the world). But the real shock was the quality of the house and what was already being replaced by the previous owner and what we had to replace to bring it up to a better standard which was by all means still miles away of the house in Germany. The house in the US had already a new roof, we exchanged windows because the old ones would either not be able to open or would not stay open to let fresh air in, we improved the insulation, the water tank busted and more. The house in Germany on the other hand has still to this day all the original parts and needed only minor work which our son could do himself. I do not even want to know what the energy efficiency between those two houses might be. And what did I learn from that? Even when a house might cost less in the US over the years you have to put in way more money to maintain it. Therefore a house in Germany might cost more upfront but in the long run way less. The taxes for houses in Germany are also way less. And part of the lesser quality is also that we have to let the water drip when we have freezing temperatures in the winter so pipes do not freeze up which happened twice to us. It was even announced on TV that everybody should let the water drip. Unbelievable!!! Why in the world does one want to save even on insulation for pipes?"