Are The Villages homes insulated for cold?

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Old 01-08-2015, 05:18 PM
Patf Patf is offline
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Default Are The Villages homes insulated for cold?

We are new to The Villages and trying to figure out if there is a problem with our house. The house was built in 2008. During the cool months, we keep the thermostat at 68 degrees during the day and turn the heat off at night. On a typical night when the low is 45 degrees, the temperature in the house drops to about 60 degrees. Is this normal?

Our neighbors tell us they do the same thing and the temp in their house only drops to about 65 degrees.

We do the same thing in our house in Michigan. When the temp is 45 degrees at night the temp only drops to about 65.

I can not find any drafts or cold air leaks in our Villages house. Are our neighbors just lucky, or do we have a problem with our house?
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Old 01-08-2015, 05:24 PM
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Originally Posted by Patf View Post
We are new to The Villages and trying to figure out if there is a problem with our house. The house was built in 2008. During the cool months, we keep the thermostat at 68 degrees during the day and turn the heat off at night. On a typical night when the low is 45 degrees, the temperature in the house drops to about 60 degrees. Is this normal?

Our neighbors tell us they do the same thing and the temp in their house only drops to about 65 degrees.

We do the same thing in our house in Michigan. When the temp is 45 degrees at night the temp only drops to about 65.

I can not find any drafts or cold air leaks in our Villages house. Are our neighbors just lucky, or do we have a problem with our house?
The houses are very well built. I think what you are experiencing is that most of our homes have a lot of glass and that exposure causes the additional drop. We have enclosed our lanai with floor to ceiling glass, and leave the sliders open. Our home remains comfortable in spite of that.
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Old 01-08-2015, 05:44 PM
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Question Why?

Are you turning the heat off to save money? With the relatively few really frigid nights during a Florida winter, I doubt that you are saving much. Comfort means more to me than the few dollars more per year that staying warm costs.

The temperature displayed on your thermostat may also be a little off. You might want to purchase a traditional glass tube thermometer to get a more accurate reading.

And remember that the ambient temperature shown on the thermostat is the temperature in the room where the thermostat is located; it may be quite different in other rooms in the house.

And, also, the thermostats are calibrated to turn on and off within a two degree range of their settings, further confusing things.

Remember, your house is like a thermos bottle; it is insulated to keep your house cool in summer and warm and winter. As the old joke goes: How does it know?
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Old 01-08-2015, 06:17 PM
NotGolfer NotGolfer is offline
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Houses are insulated! But the way they build houses are a bit different than "up north". There they put the styrofoam sheets on the walls before they side. Also the "weight" of the insulation might not be quite as thick. I'm not sure how you describe that. I too felt our house was chillier (cold) during the cold months here. When we have a day like today 1/8, with the stiff north wind and colder temps it feels cold. You may just have to layer your clothing when it's like this and put an extra blanket on the be.
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Old 01-08-2015, 10:05 PM
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We moved here from the mountains of Utah. Ski resorts, 350" of snow a year etc. We have found a home here to be very well insulated. In fact we have had the heat/AC off since before Thanksgiving. Loving the weather and our home. 1 or 2 nights with the temp dropping to freezing and we are happy campers!!
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Old 01-08-2015, 10:27 PM
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We moved here from the mountains of Utah. Ski resorts, 350" of snow a year etc. We have found a home here to be very well insulated. In fact we have had the heat/AC off since before Thanksgiving. Loving the weather and our home. 1 or 2 nights with the temp dropping to freezing and we are happy campers!!
We recently had our house insulated with a thermal barrier, additional layer of blown insulation and the garage doors insulated......we keep the thermostat at 72 and early this morning was the first time the heat came on and that was for about 45 minutes. Since we had the work completed the temp maintains between 73 - 75 degrees so heat rarely kicks in. We also installed a Nest thermostat which gives us an energy and history report. Having said all that....we notice a difference in house comfort between now and the pre-upgrades but as we all know, it's all about what makes you comfortable.
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Old 01-08-2015, 10:30 PM
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Today, I awoke to find lots of moisture on all of the metal windows frames on my new Holly home. The nice lady at The Villages customer warranty department expressed that I wasn’t the first today to call about this issue. She stated that my windows are only double pane and not thermal pane windows as we have up North. Try running the ceiling fans and have a good day.

I am going to tell the cellular blind installer to make sure that the blinds don’t contact the windows as mold could develop.

For those of you who have been here awhile, what should be done?

Last edited by twoplanekid; 01-09-2015 at 08:01 AM.
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Old 01-08-2015, 10:34 PM
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We keep our house at 70 during the winter. If I were to turn the heat off at night, I would have to wear so many layers of clothing and use so many blankets that I would be very uncomfortable.
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Old 01-09-2015, 02:22 AM
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Angry Construction of our houses?

Unfortunately, the houses here in TV are only of average construction. They have the minimum insulation in the walls and ceiling and you will not find any batting in any of the walls or ceiling with the exception of the garage/house wall. Ideally, we should have R-30 batting in the ceiling. All of the homes have blown-in insulation which eventually settles over time and is displaced because of winds. They blow it in because it is cheap and fast.

In the CBS houses (concrete block & stucco) since we have no exterior walls with studs (except the garage interior wall), the insulation they provide is is bare bones -- R-3 with a minimal air space between the block and foil covered insulation. In a decently built house in Florida, we should have at least R-11. I think the vinyl siding houses may have better insulation in the walls, but I am not sure.

Another thing they skimp on is the roof overhang. It is much too narrow for Florida houses and offers almost no protection from the sun. I guess you can tell from the tone of the above paragraphs that our windows are just okay. Nothing to write home about there either.

We are currently having granite countertops installed in our kitchen. After the existing countertops were removed we were shocked to see that the wallboard behind the cabinets was never taped! You have to wonder what other short cuts they take during construction.
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Old 01-09-2015, 05:03 AM
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We have a new house and overall it is not bad. I find the bedrooms get a bit cool but this is because the thermostat is centrally located and the heat does not run that much, even on relatively cold nights, and the bedrooms are on the exterior walls. They cool faster than the main living area and we have a single zone of heating/cooling. The houses are not the most energy efficient homes you will find but I assume this is because there is not a demand for such. They undoubtedly meet all of the Florida codes. For the most part, you need to build a custom home to do better than the building codes. In our previous home, I included a number of energy/comfort features but it wasn't clear to me that there was a return on investment: Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF), closed-cell spray foam insulation, sealed attic, and 4-zone high SEER-rated heatpump.

I would recommend that you keep the heatpump on at night (I am assuming you have a heatpump). Heatpumps work best when set to a specific temperature that you are comfortable with and not changed. A degree or 2 difference between the setpoint on the thermostat and the actual temperature is typically enough to trigger the electrical resistance auxiliary heat and that will increase your electric bill. If you keep the heat on and leave it at a fixed temperature you will minimize/eliminate the use of the auxiliary heat. 60 degrees is pretty cool. You could have additional insulation blown into the attic. Doing anything about the wall insulation may be impossible and even if you could it may not be cost effective. Covering the windows and sliders with drapes will help with heat loss. You can probably have the house inspected with some thermal imaging equipment to see if there are areas of high heat loss.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Patf View Post
We are new to The Villages and trying to figure out if there is a problem with our house. The house was built in 2008. During the cool months, we keep the thermostat at 68 degrees during the day and turn the heat off at night. On a typical night when the low is 45 degrees, the temperature in the house drops to about 60 degrees. Is this normal?

Our neighbors tell us they do the same thing and the temp in their house only drops to about 65 degrees.

We do the same thing in our house in Michigan. When the temp is 45 degrees at night the temp only drops to about 65.

I can not find any drafts or cold air leaks in our Villages house. Are our neighbors just lucky, or do we have a problem with our house?
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Old 01-09-2015, 05:18 AM
tuccillo tuccillo is offline
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The condensate on the metal window frames is not something to be overly concerned about. This will happen whenever we have a large temperature drop (like we just did). The metal frames conduct heat efficiently and cool and the air inside the house still has a relatively high dewpoint so moisture condenses on the cool metal frames. In a day or so, normal air exchange between the inside and outside of the house will bring the inside dewpoint down and the condensation will stop.

Quote:
Originally Posted by twoplanekid View Post
Today, I awoke to find lots of moisture on all of the metal windows frames on my new Holly home. The nice lady at The Villages customer warranty department expressed that I wasn’t the first today to call about this issue. She stated that my windows are only double pane and not thermal pane windows as we have up North. Try running the ceiling fans and have a good day.

I am going to tell the cellular bind installer to make sure that the binds don’t contact the windows as mold could develop.

For those of you who have been here awhile, what should be done?
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Old 01-09-2015, 06:05 AM
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I have heard that the frame (vinyl) houses are better insulated than the block houses because there is more room for insulation. I have a frame designer built in 2009 and facing north. All I know is that if i don't turn the heat on on a cold day the temperature drops to about 66 and stays there. If I turn the heat up to 70, it warms up to 70, I turn it off and it stays there until the next really cold snap. Never had moisture on windows. Running heat is much more expensive than running AC so I try to do it as little as possible
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Old 01-09-2015, 07:49 AM
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The power draw for a heatpump is roughly the same for heating and cooling modes unless you spend time in auxiliary mode (resistance heat strips). This happens when the system goes into defrost mode or when it can't keep up using the compressor only. Assuming you aren't using auxiliary mode, the power usage is proportional to the runtime.

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I have heard that the frame (vinyl) houses are better insulated than the block houses because there is more room for insulation. I have a frame designer built in 2009 and facing north. All I know is that if i don't turn the heat on on a cold day the temperature drops to about 66 and stays there. If I turn the heat up to 70, it warms up to 70, I turn it off and it stays there until the next really cold snap. Never had moisture on windows. Running heat is much more expensive than running AC so I try to do it as little as possible
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Old 01-09-2015, 07:54 AM
tuccillo tuccillo is offline
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That is probably true. I believe they are framing with 2x4s so with fiberglass batts they are probably getting something around R-11. The concrete houses use a insulating board - probably less than R-11.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jblum315 View Post
I have heard that the frame (vinyl) houses are better insulated than the block houses because there is more room for insulation. I have a frame designer built in 2009 and facing north. All I know is that if i don't turn the heat on on a cold day the temperature drops to about 66 and stays there. If I turn the heat up to 70, it warms up to 70, I turn it off and it stays there until the next really cold snap. Never had moisture on windows. Running heat is much more expensive than running AC so I try to do it as little as possible
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Old 01-09-2015, 08:29 AM
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I find my house very well insulated. But, depends on how big or open your house is IMO. IMO you should set the thermostat during the cold weather and leave it. IMO if you let the house temp. get to low and turn the heat on it just takes long time to bring the house up to steady comfortable temp. So IMO savings may not be that much.
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