Do you know that you also heat / cool the air around your house?
Energy loss from a home is inevitable. The forces of equilibrium, the physics of nature, continually strive to balance the heat energy on the inside, with that on the outside.
Even in the best built houses, when the heating or cooling system goes OFF, the inside and outside temperatures immediately begin to equalize. There is a way to stop that, though.
Attic insulation helps to make energy loss from a home as slow as possible. It minimizes the amount of time the heating or cooling system must be on. It helps to keep the temperature within a comfortable range. To help achieve this objective, attic insulation is used to control convection.
Contact us to control your convection and start saving soon.
Blowing Insulation: The Way to Go
While there are many ways to insulate, we feel that Blown loos fill is the way to go in the Attic. In large measure, the performance of blown insulation products is controlled by the installer.
There are two important guidelines that must be consistently followed to ensure that the insulation is properly applied over the entire attic area:
- The attic insulation must be applied at or above the correct density for the desired R-value. This is often checked by counting the number of bags specified for the area to be covered.
- The insulation must be applied at or above the specified minimum thickness for the desired R-value.
Would you like to have a perfectly insulated attic? Contact us now
Attic Expertise for Your House
As a qualified thermal efficiency expert, our contractor a significant investment in equipment, materials, and training to insure that each job is individually engineered to provide the stated R-value at the specified thickness for loose-fill insulation.
If the loose-fill is applied at the minimum thickness, extensive testing has shown that it will be dense enough to achieve the specified R-value. This testing enables manufacturers to label their products accurately, beyond all FTC requirements, and allow for application variations at the same time. Any home can benefit from an excellent insulated attic.
Also Consider Attic Door Insulation
In addition to attics insulation, we also offer attic door insulation solutions. Since much air escapes through the attic door, this area is as important.
Would you like to stop heating the environment around your house? Contact us
Calculate Savings Through Improving Your Attic Insulation
Click here for our partner’s calculator: Attic Insulation Calculator
Q: What about all of the other insulating options out there?
High R Values
Sprayed Fiberglass Insulation delivers better R-Values and is designed for all enclosed cavities, including walls and ceilings. As with batt fiberglass insulation, it will not settle, rot or decay, enabling a consistent R-value from the moment it’s installed. The advantage to sprayed fiberglass insulation is its ability to fit the form of any cavity, providing complete compression and gap-free coverage. It can also be covered with drywall almost immediately after being installed, unlike most sprayed cellulose products. Some of the more commonly recognized sprayed fiberglass insulation products include:
- ProPink Complete Blown-In Wall System by Owens Corning
- Perfect Fill Loosefill Netting System by Guardian Building Products
- AsureR Wall System by Guardian Building Products
Innovative Icynene® Spray Foam Insulation and Air Barrier is the leading 100% water-blown foam insulation that minimizes air leakage for increased energy efficiency, creates a healthier indoor environment, reduces airborne sounds and offers greater design freedom. Icynene® maintains its performance with no loss of R-value over time. It does not shrink, sag or settle. Icynene® adheres to most construction materials and is the perfect insulation for walls, attics, ceilings and floors.
Radiant Heat Barrier Paint is an aluminum colored, water-based, low emissivity (low-e) coating. When applied to building materials such as plywood, OSB or plasterboard, the use of a radiant heat barrier can lower the materials surface emissivity, thereby blocking a large portion of the radiant heat trying to enter the home
Solar Guard Radiant Foil Faced Material is versatile at minimizing heat transfer problems. Solar Guard provides radiant/conduction/convection protection and can lower attic temperatures up to 40 degrees. Both Radiant Heat Barrier Paint and Solar Guard are excellent investments providing savings on your monthly utility bills while improving comfort levels in your home.
LOOSE-FILL SPRAY: Fibrous spray insulations are an innovative use of some traditional blown insulation products or recycled materials all using low-toxicity binders. These loose-fill solutions can be sprayed when mixed with moisture or binding agents. Some are intended for filling cavities while others are designed to adhere to exposed surfaces such as joists and floor pans. Correct installation requires careful management of moisture content and carefully watching the installed density. Cellulose-based solutions such as Green Fiber’s Cocoon System are made from recycled newspaper and incorporate EPA-registered fungicide. Some companies are fine-tuning their blends to emphasize fireproofing and acoustical attenuation along with energy-saving insulation.
SPRAY FOAM: Foam-in-place technology is playing an increasingly important role in establishing a tight building envelope. Historically, most of these products utilized high-density, closed-cell polyurethanes, which involved exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals during application. Today they usually flash their VOCs quickly and become fairly innocuous after a short time. Closed-cell foams are very effective at managing air leakage and can have high R-values of up to 7 per inch. Unfortunately, most still use HCFCs as blowing agents (with some notable exceptions such as SuperGreen).
But there are now a number of non-ozone-depleting, open-cell products available. These open-cell foams have lower R-values, but manufacturing them requires fewer hydrocarbon resources. Some are managing to replace petrochemicals with bio-based raw materials. The Icynene insulation system has a very long track record and is the most widely installed open-cell foam used today. BioBased 501 is a polyurethane foam with a soybean-oil base that uses carbon dioxide as a blowing agent. These products seem to be gaining rapid acceptance as builders look for alternatives to traditional insulation. Put It All Together
With all of these approaches, real success comes from paying attention to the details. When wall and roof assemblies effectively connect with improved insulation products, we achieve synergistic gains. As our industry increases understanding of and respect for the fundamentals of building science, it is leading to many significant product innovations. Keep your eyes and knowledge tuned to improving our buildings’ performance.
