Maintaining a healthy home climate system remains essential as seasons and temperatures change. Home comfort systems like HVAC and gas heat provide necessary warmth during colder times and cooling in the summer. However, without proper insulation energy efficiency, your home systems’ hot or cold air is wasted.
Learning how insulation impacts energy efficiency demonstrates the worthiness of investing in energy-efficient insulation. Homeowners who install this kind of insulation not only benefit from increased comfort but also enjoy lower energy bills.
Before learning about the relationship between insulation and energy efficiency, it’s essential to ask:
What is Home Insulation?
Home insulation is a material added to the structure of your home that helps reduce conductive heat flow. Despite the word “heat” in this term, reducing conductive heat flow helps keep warm and cold air inside your home and outdoor air out.
Different types of insulation impact your home’s energy efficiency to varying degrees. Each material has a rating, called an R-value, to standardize and compare various styles of insulation. These values rate the material’s resistance to conductive heat flow: the higher the R-value, the more efficient and resistant the insulation.
How Does Energy-Efficient Insulation Work?
Energy-efficient insulation traps tiny pockets of air in the various cracks and crevices in your home’s structure. This keeps the air your system generates in the home, maintaining your desired room temperature.
This heat entrapment can occur in either direction, depending on the season. In other words, your insulation keeps warm air in your home during winter while keeping it out during summer. Energy-efficient insulation helps keep your HVAC system doing its job correctly without a monthly cost- upgrade your insulation today.
Types of Energy-Efficient Insulation
There are various types of energy-efficient insulation. Below are the four most popular materials, which all prove to be reliable at maintaining both cool and warm indoor climates:
Fiberglass
Fiberglass is one of the most popular materials used for insulation. Insulation with this material comes in thick batts placed between studs within your home’s drywall. They are fire-resistant, eliminating concerns about wiring electricity nearby.
Rigid Foam
Denser and typically more resistant to conductive heat flow, rigid foam comprises the pink or blue foam boards many homeowners use between cement or structural elements in their basements. Since the rigid foam is thicker than other insulation, it’s often easier to achieve the right level of conductive heat resistance.
Mineral Wool
Of all the insulation in homes that improves energy efficiency, mineral wool might be the safest and easiest to install. Mineral wool provides the additional benefits of being fire, sound, and moisture-resistant. Coming in batts, it holds its shape for easy installation.
Cellulose Loose Fill
Cellulose loose-fill is an excellent option for its ability to fit into nearly any space. Since professionals spray cellulose loose-fill insulation into cracks and crevices in homes with an air blower, this type of insulation reaches a new level of flexibility.
How Insulation Can Make Your Home More Efficient
Despite knowing what insulation is and how it works, you might still wonder, “how does Insulation increase energy efficiency?”. Energy efficiency is a byproduct of the relationship between the insulation and your HVAC system. The air trapped by insulation keeps you comfortable and makes climate control much easier for your HVAC unit.
Since outdoor air cannot make cooling or warming your home harder for your air conditioning unit, your home reaches desired temperatures much more quickly. When HVAC units work more efficiently, your comfort levels increase, and your utility expenses decrease. Insulation lays the groundwork for efficient HVAC functioning, cheaper bills, and healthier home systems.
The Importance of Home Insulation
Beyond making your life more comfortable and less expensive, insulation is a crucial part of any home’s structure that builders should never exclude. Homes without insulation suffer from temperature inconsistencies and higher energy bills and can experience more problems with pests, rodents, water damage, mold, and many other issues.
Insulation energy efficiency takes necessary insulation one step further with added benefits that make it a no-brainer to install. Beyond the benefits of noise reduction, temperature control, and structural support, energy-efficient insulation also increases your home’s value. When you prepare your home for the market, you’ll be glad you chose to upgrade your home’s insulation.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – Insulation Energy Efficiency
Below are some frequently asked questions from customers about insulation energy efficiency:
Where to Install Insulation in Your Home?
Many homeowners are unsure where to install insulation in their homes. Luckily, a few “no-brainer” locations for insulation energy efficiency have proven the safest and best places for these materials. You can follow other homeowners’ examples or hire an insulation company to help determine the ideal insulation placement in your home.
Conducting an energy audit is the best way to begin deciding where to install insulation. However, most homeowners choose the attic as the first place to install insulation. The attic provides the perfect link between every part of your home, making it a natural place to try installing insulation first.
Many homeowners also choose to install insulation within their walls. Insulation within dry walls is especially crucial for homes in colder climates that will battle much harsher temperatures. Nevertheless, even homes in the hottest states benefit from wall insulation as it both retains and restrain heat depending on the season.
Is Upgrading Your Insulation Worth It?
The short answer is that upgrading your insulation is worth it. As we reviewed, many savings come from installing insulation energy efficiency. Whether these savings are your comfort or dollars, the value of installing insulation goes far beyond home improvement.
Increase Your Insulation Energy Efficiency with Attic Projects Attic and Crawl Space Experts
To learn more about insulation energy efficiency or to speak to one of our trusted, reliable technicians, call Attic Projects’ experts. Our experienced technicians will provide a free consultation and advise you on how to proceed with new insulation. Call (858) 302-4311 to schedule a consultation for San Diego homes or (714) 487-0792 for Orange County/Los Angeles homes.
