Energy and Money-Saving Ways to Insulate Your Attic
The attic can be one of the most likely places in your house for valuable heat or cool air to be lost. In the summer, if your attic isn’t properly insulated, heat from outside will seep inside and make the cost of running your air conditioner and cooling your house increase. Likewise, in the winter, heat can be sucked out of the house through a poorly insulated attic. With the high price of energy, you can get the most out of the money you spend on heating and cooling your house by making sure that your attic is properly insulated. Insulating your attic can help reduce energy bills by as much as 20 percent. Who wouldn’t want that financial incentive?
The first thing you’ll want to do is climb up into the attic to see how much insulation is there. Take a ruler to measure the thickness of the insulation, and then multiply that number by the R-value per inch of the type of insulation used, which can easily be found on the web. This will give you your R-value. The higher the number, the better. Next, do a search for the recommended amount of insulation for the region in which you live (the Department of Energy is a good place to start looking), and subtract the amount you do have from that number, which will tell you just how much more insulation you need to install. Make sure you also know the measurements of the area you are covering before heading out to buy your supplies.
There are many different types of insulation, such as fiberglass, cellulose, and polystyrene board, just to name a few. With these types of insulation, some come in loose-fill, while others might be in rolls. You can add the same type of insulation that you already have, or you can choose another type. Either way is still effective. Your local hardware or home improvement store should have the materials needed for insulation, including blowers that can be rented for the loose-fill type. When installing, make sure you do not block air flow in the eaves or cover up recessed lighting. Be sure to read any instructions that come with the insulation, as well. If you are not the do-it-yourself type of homeowner, there are also many companies that can do it for you. Regardless of which route you take, the time and money spent now on insulating your attic will come back to you in the form of savings on your gas and electric bills.
If you have an older home, you might need to check that you don’t have asbestos attic insulation. You will need to carefully remove it because of it’s negative health effects.
Not only is insulating your attic good for your budget and your wallet, it also is good for the environment. Saving energy and using your heating and air conditioning systems less reduces carbon offsets. The less carbon that is released into the atmosphere, the better. So, please, take the time to ensure that your attic is well-insulated and is helping to keep hot air in the house in the winter and cold air in the house in the summer. Your wallet and the environment will thank you.
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Attic Radiant Barrier - Cut Heating and Cooling Bills
In a house, most heat transfer takes place through the attic. Warmer air is constantly looking for a cooler spot to migrate to. So, in the summer, the warm air trapped in the attic will try to come into the house, making your air conditioner work harder, run longer hours, and give you a larger bill to pay. In the winter, the warm air you want to keep indoors will try to escape to the colder air outside through the attic. This increases heater usage and heating costs. There are many different ways to help reduce some of this heat transfer, making your home more energy efficient and comfortable in all seasons. In addition to installing sufficient insulation, energy efficient windows, sealing gaps, and weather stripping, attic radiant barriers are increasing in popularity because of the positive effects they have on reducing this heat transfer.
An attic radiant barrier uses some type of reflective material, usually aluminum, which is coated and then attached on both sides to a substrate material, which can be made of paper or plastic. There is usually one shiny side and one dull side to the barrier, but that just comes from the manufacturing; it doesn’t matter which side faces up or down. When using this barrier, remember that the side facing the source of the heat can reflect anywhere from 95 to 98 percent of it. So, in the summer, much less heat is let through the attic into your house. Consequently, the side that faces away from the source of the heat only allows 2 to 5 percent of it through, so it will help keep the heat in your home during the winter. All barriers must face an open airspace, which can be as small as ¾” of an inch. It is the airspace and the radiant barrier working together that create the barrier to heat. If there is no airspace, the radiant barrier will not work as it should. Also, if there is a lot of dust in the region where the radiant barrier will be installed, it could cause issues, because the dust will reduce the barrier’s ability to reflect, thus making a barrier that is not as effective. There are solutions to this that a specialist can help consumers with. Some states and cities are adding radiant barriers to their energy and building codes, as well, to help with conserving energy.
There are many other uses for an attic radiant barrier. Anywhere in your home that has airspace available and needs help in cutting down on the amount of heat transfer, they can be used. Some people have attached them to the backs of their garage doors to reduce heat transfer there. Others have wrapped their water heaters or lined their pipes with radiant barriers, as well. Some have even lined crawl spaces with them. Reducing the amount of heat transfer in your home is as easy as installing these barriers anywhere that heat can sneak inside or escape to the outside. There are lots of different ceiling ideas to work the efficiency of your home.
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How to Lay Attic Insulation
Performing your own home remodeling can sometimes be dangerous and that’s why it is a good idea to learn the right information on how to lay attic insulation. It’s not exactly a difficult job and it can be done safely with no problems or injury if you know the proper rules to follow. You will want to always purchase unfaced fiber glass insulation that has no vapor retarder. When you are adding multiple layers to an existing blanket or maybe a loose fill insulation product, unfaced fiber glass will give you the best results. If for some reason the attic you are working in already has insulation but doesn’t have any vapor retarder, you will definitely want to make sure you have at least one square foot of free ventilated area for every 150 square feet of attic floor space.
You never want to use faced fiber glass when you are adding another layer to existing attic insulation. What you should use in this situation is unfaced fiber glass that does not have any vapor retarder. When you learn how to lay attic insulation, you’ll realize that the insulation facing acts like a vapor retarder and will help to lower the level of moisture that enters through a wall or any other surface. If you added a second vapor retarder over layers of faced insulation, any amount of moisture, no matter how small, that gets through the first layer will actually condense onto the second. Some damage to ceilings or walls will occur because of this condensation and the areas will be stained. If the condensation continues for a long period of time, then there may even be structural damage.
Any decent guide that tells you how to lay attic insulation should always cover the subject of radiant barriers. There are three main types of radiant barriers. Single layer film material, bubble film or multilayer, and then single films that are put directly on the underside of the sheathings on the roof, are the three most common types. However, you must know that radiant barriers are not actually insulation. In fact, they do not even have an r-value. The fact is that you can find radiant barrier products which actually use the concept of trapped air and that enables them to have an r-value, even though it will be very small.
Another interesting fact when learning how to lay attic insulation, is the difference between summer r-value and winter r-value. Summer r-value is actually the insulation rating when examining the heat flow in a downward direction. Winter r-value is when you examine the heat flowing upwards. Even though radiant barriers are sometimes used, it is almost always more cost effective and overall effective to simply use quality insulation products. Also, in truth, the actual heat flow which is resisted by radiant barriers is usually much less than what the manufacturers claim. Learning how to lay attic insulation is a skill that anyone can pick up as long as they learn the right methods that are safe and effective.
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Facts of Insulation R-Value
For anyone purchasing or remodeling a home, knowing the facts of insulation and the r-value ratings is very important. It is so important that not knowing what r-value insulation ratings mean and how different ratings affect your utility bill can end up costing you a lot of money that you could have saved. Simply put, r-value insulation ratings are used in measuring how well an insulation product can resist the flow of heat. Insulation products with a higher r-value are more effective than those with lower r-values. The facts of insulation r-value and the different types of insulation are important for any home owner.
Although basic common sense would seem to dictate that the thicker an insulation product, the better it will be at the job of insulating a home. Unfortunately, this is a case where common sense is incorrect. Insulation with a higher r-value doesn’t necessarily mean that it is thicker than products with lower r-values. In fact, it’s probably thinner than lower-rated insulation products. Actually, if two products are different in thickness, if they have identical r-value ratings, then they will probably be equally good at resisting heat. The facts of insulation r-value is sometimes completely against common sense.
Unfortunately, not all facts of insulation r-value products are necessarily positive. The way that testing is done on insulation in order to determine its r-value is by testing the product in an environment with a stable temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit, where there is no air movement at all. Obviously, we use insulation in rooms and homes where the problem is that we have too much air movement and temperature isn’t always an ideal 70 degrees. Sometimes the insulation’s r-value isn’t always a truly accurate indicator of how well it resists heat flow.
In North America, an insulation rating of R-12 is the recommended level. There are many interesting facts of insulation r-value and how they are created and used. It may seem obvious, but the r-value of certain types of housing insulation is dramatically lowered if there are air or water leaks. Here’s one of the interesting facts of insulation r-value: Insulation one inch thick is actually the equivalent of having 30 inches of concrete. That’s how effective true insulation products are at resisting heat flow.
However, there are three main types of insulation and each one is made from a different material. House insulation r-value in blown-in-cellulose is actually 3.70 per inch. Another material widely used for insulation is fiberglass and it has a rating at 3.14 per inch. Finally, one of the best materials is expanded polystyrene which is at 4.00 per inch.
The goal is to protect your home and keep the air inside stable and comfortable no matter what the weather outside is like. Learning the facts about insulation r-value will help you when deciding what type of insulation you want to have installed into your home. It may cost you more money up front to buy better insulation, but you’ll definitely save money in the long run when you realize that the insulation is doing its job. In the end, learning the facts about r-value will help you save a lot of money.
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Welcome to Attic Insulation Information
Ten or Twenty years ago insulation and energy efficiency were only popular with environmentalists, but now with rising energy costs everyone is concerned with improving the efficiency of their homes. Attic insulation is the most effective way to improve efficiency during the winter time - due to heat rising. We will be going over how to install attic insulation, what type of insulations you can use, and what you should look out for when insulating.
I know first hand how effective attic insulation is on the efficiency of your home. My electric bills fell by 40% during the winter time. It also helped the bill in the summer time, just not as dramatically. The cost to do my attic with cellulose insulation was a little over $600. That included a free rental of the blowing machine with the purchase of 20 or more bags of insulation.
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