Insulation

Properly insulating your home will not only help reduce your heating and cooling costs but also make your home more comfortable.

How Insulation Works

You need insulation in your home to provide resistance to heat flow. The more heat flow resistance your insulation provides, the lower your heating and cooling costs.

Heat flows naturally from a warmer to a cooler space. In the winter, this heat flow moves directly from all heated living spaces to adjacent unheated attics, garages, basements, and even to the outdoors. During the cooling season, heat flows from the outdoors to the interior of a house. To maintain comfort, the heat lost in the winter must be replaced by your heating system and the heat gained in the summer must be removed by your cooling system. Properly insulating your home will decrease this heat flow by providing an effective resistance to the flow of heat.  An insulation's resistance to heat flow is measured or rated in terms of its thermal resistance or R-value.

Adding Insulation to an Existing Home

Unless your home was specially constructed for energy efficiency, you can usually reduce your energy bills by adding more insulation. Many older homes have less insulation than homes built today, but adding insulation to a newer home may also pay for itself within a few years. Our home energy audit will include an insulation check as a routine part of the whole-house energy audit.

SustainableWorks Insulation Evaluations:

• Check the attic, walls and floors adjacent to an unheated space, like a garage or basement.
• Inspect the exterior walls using an electrical outlet:
• Inspect and measure the thickness (inches) of any insulation in unfinished basement ceilings and walls, or above crawl spaces..
• Determine the R-values of insulation previously installed in your home.
• Determine whether you have vermiculite insulation and whether it contains asbestos

Attics are often one of the most cost effective places in a house to insulate, especially if you'd like to add insulation.  We will typically install loose-fill insulation in attics as it is less expensive than batt insulation and provides better coverage.  Floors above unheated spaces are typically the next most cost effective place to insulate and will require batt type insulation.  Insulating walls will have energy saving value but the cost of installation varies considerably depending on the type of siding material on your home.  Our Energy Consultants will help you determine the cost effectiveness of wall insulation. 

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