AU vs. US (the environment series): Insulation

So builders in Australia apparently don’t believe in insulation. Even after a year, I have not gotten over this fact. I’ll admit that New South Wales is pretty nice in the spring and fall, but in winter it can get down to freezing and in summer it can get up to 100F. To me, it seems like buffering your house from these extremes would be a good idea.

And some Aussies are even catching on – out in Dubbo it seemed like everyone I talked to was insulating their house. Why now and not 50 years ago when the house was built?? I don’t know. It’s kinda like insulation is this great new thing that just came to Dubbo. Maybe it will make it to Sydney, next (you know, Dubbo is so cutting edge compared to Sydney). Even in Ben’s department’s fancy new building, the contractors refused to install insulation – even in humidity and temperature sensitive rooms.

But here’s the thing I don’t understand. The inside temp is always within a few degrees of the outside temp, but the humidity level inside can be twice as high as the humidity outside. I spilled some instant coffee on the counter (perfectly dry), and when we came back a few hours later it had turned to little dots of brown liquid. How the hell did they construct their houses?!?

They say Australia is ~10 years behind the rest of the world. With regards to insulation, it’s a lot more than that! So the US wins this round by a long shot.