Hello there, my name is Mr. Wilshire, and in this lesson we're going to be looking at insulating our homes and schools.

The outcome for this lesson is, I can find out about ways to insulate our homes and schools.

There are a few keywords to consider as we work our way through this lesson.

The first is insulate, then it's fuel, after that is temperature and then compare.

Finally, impact.

Don't worry if you are not too sure what some of these words mean, you may have heard them before, or they could be completely new.

Don't worry though, because the definitions have appeared on the screen for you now.

So you can pause the video here and then restart once you've recapped.

Pause the video now if you need to.

The first part of this lesson is called insulating buildings.

The children are watching an online video about animals that live in the Arctic.

The presenter says that animals that live in cold climates often have lots of fat in their bodies.

Here you can see an image of a walrus with some very large teeth coming outta either side there.

But why? Why is it that animals that live in cold climates have lots of fat in their bodies? Do you know? Pause the video now and discuss.

So why did you think? Lucas says, "Well, fat is a thermal insulator.

It helps to keep animals warm by reducing the heat that they lose from their bodies." That's a very good answer there.

I wonder if you came up with anything similar.

So what other characteristics do animals have to help keep them warm? Mammals have fur as well as fat to insulate them and to keep them warm.

Here you can see a polar bear.

Humans are a type of mammal too.

We have hair on our bodies, but not as much as some other animals so we wear clothes to insulate our bodies.

We don't just have hair on our heads.

You've got hair on your arms and your legs and in other places too.

Here you can see an example of child dressed for some very cold weather, although I don't think the hair is going to keep you very warm in really cold weather, is it? Not like the polar bear.

Humans also insulate their own buildings.

I wonder if you know why.

Pause the video here and discuss.

So why do humans need to insulate their buildings? Well, it's important to stay nice for warm.

I think if you were cold all the time, you'd start catching lots of different colds and viruses, wouldn't you? It wouldn't be very healthy to stay freezing colds all the time.

So it's a good idea to insulate buildings to try and keep that warmth in.

Let's find out more.

In cold countries, warm buildings lose heat to the cooler, outside air.

In hot countries, cold buildings may gain heat from the warmer, outside temperatures.

There you can see two diagrams of how heat may be escaping or how heat may be getting in.

If you insulate a building, it reduces the heat that's exchanged with the air outside.

Why does that matter though? Pause the video now and discuss.

So why do you think it matters so much? Let's find out more.

We use fuel to run heaters to keep our buildings warm in the winter.

We also run fans and air conditioning units to keep buildings cool in the summer.

Here you can see three images, one of a radiator, one of a fan, and one of an air con unit.

Insulating buildings reduces the amount of fuel that we need to keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The more that we need to use these different devices to keep ourselves warm or cold, the more energy that we're going to consume, the more fuel we're going to burn.

So how can we insulate our buildings? Take a moment to discuss.

Hopefully you've had a good chance to discuss how we can insulate our buildings.

Are we gonna wrap it up in cotton wall or bubble wrap? I don't think so.

Let's find out more.

Materials like fibreglass, foam board and spray foam are commonly used to insulate walls, floors, attics, and roofs in buildings because they reduce the amount of heat that's transferred.

Here you can see some roof insulation going on before you put any tiles over the top.

Here you can see some wall insulation on the outside.

You look very closely, that looks a lot like polystyrene that you get inside packaging in a box.

Here you can see some wall insulation on the inside as well.

So each wall is built up using lots of different rafters to block it out, and then those gaps are filled in with insulation.

Often when builders or anyone who's building these kind of rooms will do this, they will tape up the sides of the boards as well, so they'll make sure that the polystyrene or the fibreglass foam board is taped next to the rafter.

This means that there's no gaps.

You can get special silver tape that will go in-between all these gaps, making sure that no cold air can get through, no warm air can get out or versa.

Double glazed windows also provide insulation to reduce heat exchange between the inside and the outside of the buildings.

Here you can see an example of a double glazed window.

They have two layers of glass with a gap in between.

The gap is filled with air or other gases to make it difficult for heat to pass through.

A really well insulated building will reduce the amount of fuel needed to maintain the required temperature.

Let's stop and think.

How can we reduce the amounts of fuel that we need to keep buildings warm in winter and cool in summer? Is it to open windows, reduce insulation, or increase insulation? Discuss.

The correct answer here is c, to increase insulation.

Lucas says, "What else can I do to reduce my family's use of fuel to heat our home?" Hmm, that's a good question.

What kind of things could Lucas do to reduce the family's use of fuel? Take a moment to discuss.

I wonder what kind of ideas you came up with.

Let's think about it some more.

Lucas says, "We could turn the heating up." "Aisha says, "We could open a window." Would these suggestions work? Is this going to reduce the amount of fuel consumed in the home? Discuss.

What do you think? Would any of those suggestions work? Well, Lucas and Aisha's ideas wouldn't work, unfortunately, turning up the heating would increase fuel use.

It'll make you feel very warm, but you're going to need to turn it up by a lot and that's going to increase the amount of fuel used.

Opening windows would make the room cooler, so more fuel would be needed to get it to the temperature that we want, however.

How could we reduce our use of fuel for heating, for example? Take a moment to discuss now.

What kind of ideas did you come up with? How could we reduce our use of fuel for heating? Well, as well as building insulation, there are other measures that can reduce fuel costs.

One way is to reduce the temperature we expect in our rooms. If we wear more or warmer layers of clothing, we can adjust to cooler rooms in our homes.

We would then need less fuel to heat the room to reach that lower temperature.

Here you can see someone wearing lots of warm layers.

We could also use a draught excluder on the outside doors to stop air exchanging under the door.

We could use thick curtains to insulate our windows at night.

Heat can escape through all parts of our buildings, the walls, the windows, the roof, and the floor.

Anywhere that there's a gap, usually as well.

Thermal imaging cameras are used to see where heat is lost from buildings.

Here you can see someone using one of these special cameras to take a thermal image of a building.

It's gonna show where any of those big gaps are or anywhere that they think that the heat is going to be escaping.

The colours on this thermal image show the temperature.

Red and yellow colours show the warmest areas.

Blue shades show the coolest areas.

Here you can see an example of a thermal image of a building, and I can see there that the red and yellow areas are mainly in the centre and also at the very, very top of the house up there as well in the corner.

The blue parts, however, are some of the coolest areas.

Hmm, I wonder if this picture is showing a cool day or a warm day, you decide.

Let's stop and think.

Other than adding insulation, how else can we reduce fuel costs for heating? Take a read of the statements and decide which one best fits? The correct answer here is a, to reduce the temperature we expect of our rooms. So this is your very first task.

Look at the thermal image of the house.

Step 1 is to identify which areas are hottest and which are coldest.

Step 2, if you assume that the house is the same temperature everywhere inside, explain which parts of the house are best and worst insulated.

Remember, the blue areas are the coldest and the red areas are the hottest.

You can use this thermal image of the house to help you.

There's the roof pointed out, the main wall, the top of the walls and the window.

You may want to add some extra labels yourself as well.

So you decide using this guide.

Best of luck with your task.

Restart when you've done that.

How did you get on? Well, here is an example.

Yours could be similar.

The main wall is an orange or yellow colour in the image, meaning that it's the hottest part of the house.

The roof, the windows on the top of the wall are blue, which means that they are colder.

The main wall is the worst insulated part of the house because heat is escaping there.

That's why it appears orange on the thermal image, the best insulated part of the house are the roof, the windows, and the top of the wall.

This is because they're all blue, which means that they're cold, so not much heat is escaping from the house in these areas.

So if you were to assume that the temperature was the same across the house and this was maybe a cold day, you can see where the heat is starting to escape.

So insulation may be a good idea on those walls that have come out as red.

I wonder if your answer was similar.

Well done for completing your task.

The next part of this lesson is called measuring the impact of insulation.

Here's Aisha, and she says, " I'd like to find out where we lose heat in our school, but we don't have a thermal imaging camera." I wonder how Aisha could investigate heat loss inside her school.

Come up with a few ideas.

How are you going to find about heat loss around a school without a thermal imaging camera? Let's find out more.

Temperature data can be collected around our schools and homes to reveal heat loss.

Aisha says, "Well, I could use a thermometer to measure the temperature in three rooms around the school." So Aisha chooses to measure the temperature of the school hall, her classroom, and the main corridor, and here are some of Aisha's results.

The hall was 20 degrees, the classroom was 22 degrees and the corridor was 16 degrees.

Hmm, corridor is very cold there, isn't it? Wonder why.

So where is the most heat being lost in Aisha's school? Discuss.

Most heat is lost in the corridor here because it's got the lowest temperature.

The hall and the classroom are roughly around the same kind of temperature, aren't they? The corridor, however, is a lot colder than either of those two places.

A good temperature to have in a house is around 20 degrees.

So the hall and the classroom are well suited here.

The corridor has started to feel a bit cold.

I wouldn't want to be there for long in shorts and a T-shirt.

Aisha says, "In the corridor, the door to the playground is often left open so I think that's why it loses so much heat." And Aisha uses her data to persuade her head teacher that the door to the playground should be kept closed to save fuel, used to heat the building.

That's a very good idea.

Aisha repeats her temperature investigation in the corridor later that day to compare the impact of the closed door.

At 10:00 AM, the door open, it was 18 degrees, at 2:00 PM with the door closed it was 21 degrees.

Ah, there is a remarkable difference there isn't there? It's much closer to that comfortable temperature that we found in the hall and in the classroom.

She says, "Well, I think the open door was a source of heat loss." Aisha's investigation in this case has shown that temperature data analysis can result in actions or changes which reduce heat losses.

Although it's going to take a little longer to find the temperature around the school using thermometers in this way, it can be done without the use of one of those heat-sensing cameras.

So let's stop and think.

How could you investigate heat loss around a building? Are you gonna collect weather data, collect pupil's opinions, or collect some temperature data? The correct answer here is by collecting temperature data.

Aisha thinks about how she can use temperature data analysis to reduce the fuel costs at her home.

She says, "When I play with my friends in the streets, I often leave the door open so I can hear my mum calling me if she needs me." Aisha could compare fuel costs before and after making changes to find out whether those changes have had an impact.

Here, before the action, there's an open door, and after the action, a closed door.

So if she takes measurements from both of these times, she's gonna find out if the action she's taken is going to help save fuel.

How would you expect the fuel bill to change in Aisha's home after the action though? So what did you think? Let's find out more.

Well, here are the fuel bills for Aisha's home for last year and for this year.

You can see there that the electricity and gas, the charges were listed as £110.

24, and the following year in February, the charges were £90.

24.

So there has been a saving there, hasn't there? Quite a lot, in fact, just around £20, how fantastic.

So did closing the door have an impact on the fuel use at Aisha's house? Discuss.

Did closing the door have an impact on fuel costs? I wonder what you came up with.

Aisha says, "Yes it did, the fuel costs went down after we closed the door at home because my house lost less heat.

This mean that we needed the heating on less to keep my home warm." Of course, all that hot air isn't going to be escaping outta the front door that she leaves open.

We could try and be a little bit more accurate here and work out the exact amount that was saved.

For example, the fuel cost one year could be more expensive than the following year, so Aisha could've taken a reading of the fuel bill when it was very expensive and then the next year taken a reading when it wasn't as expensive.

It would be good to find out how much fuel costs in 2023 compared to 2024.

Fuel costs should be factored in as well.

Just because it was a little bit cheaper one year doesn't mean that anything was saved, especially if the fuel was really cheap that year.

How could you decide which actions were most effective at reducing heat loss? Take a read of the statements and decide.

The correct answer here is to analyse temperature data.

How could you tell if actions to reduce fuel costs have had an effect? Read the statements and decide.

Correct answer here is b, to compare fuel costs before and after the action.

Here's task B.

Use your knowledge and your own research to make a list or a poster to inform people about how to save on fuel costs at home or school through insulation and other methods.

You may like to consider some of these things.

How to insulate the building, particularly using environmentally friendly methods.

How to limit air moving between the inside and the outside of the building through gaps and windows.

The temperature of rooms in the building, the times when heating or cooling systems are used and the clothing you wear at different times of the year when inside the building.

Consider some of those points alongside research when you're coming up with your poster or your list.

Best of luck with your task.

How did you get on? Here's some examples.

Tips to save on fuel costs.

You could use draught excluders to limit air exchange through gaps under doors and around window frames.

If you're designing a building, you could include insulation panels in walls made of environmentally friendly materials like wood fibre or straw.

Aim for the rooms to be heated to between 18 and 21 degrees Celsius.

These are just some examples on how you could save on fuel costs.

You could also change your clothing accordingly to the weather.

In cold weather, the school should allow us to wear extra non-uniform jumpers and warm hats.

And in hot weathers, we should be allowed to take our school jumpers or blazes off and wear short sleeve shirts.

Only have the heating of fans on when people are using or about to use the building is also another example of how to save in fuel costs.

Let's summarise our lesson.

Insulating buildings reduces the amount of fuel we need to keep them warm in winter and cold in summer.

Other measures can reduce fuel costs such as reducing the temperatures we expect in our rooms. Temperature data can be collected around the school to reveal heat loss as well.

Temperature data analysis can result in actions for children and adults to take to reduce heat losses.

Fuel cost data comparisons will show whether actions have an impact.

Hopefully now you've got a better understanding of how you could save fuel in your school.

Remember, just because it's cold outside doesn't mean you have to turn the heating onto full whack.

You could just get some blankets or even decide to put on a jumper.

Sometimes burning a lot of fuel can have an adverse effect on the environment.

We need to consider that before we turn on machines for a long time.

Well done for completing your task in this lesson.

I've been Mr. Wilshire, thank you very much for listening.