• A Thermal Bridge is created when materials that are poorer insulators (e.g. concrete sills or blocks) than surrounding materials come in contact, allowing heat to flow through the path created. In passive and low energy construction the building is super insulated and thermal bridging is eliminated by careful detailing to prevent heat loss; ensuring the standard is met.
• An example of thermal bridging is in the window sill detail. This can be easily seen in the thermal modelling images completed by our in-house team, and shows the dramatic difference in the heat flow between the basic, most common detail on the left and the FmK Thermal Bridge Free detail on the right.
• Although by itself, this may not seem a lot, but when multiplied to all the sills in a building along with all the other thermal bridges, this becomes very significant. Another major effect that thermal bridges have is that they cause the surface area at the affected area to be significantly less which promotes mild growth when coupled with high moisture levels inside. Therefore careful detailing is essential but not overly difficult to achieve on site.
