A Guide to Insulation for Your Home

Insulation acts as a blanket for you home. During cold winters, it serves as a barrier to keep as much of the warm air produced by your heating system as possible in the home. In summers, it servers the opposite role of keeping warm air out and cool air in. All and all, this makes it a pretty flexible building material when you think about it.

The key to keeping your heating and cooling costs down is to understand insulation and use the best possible type for you home. To assist in this regard, every community maintains building codes calling out for minimum levels of insulation. Unfortunately, these minimum levels often are insufficient, a particular problem with new homes given that builders use them as the standard to minimize the cost of construction. Nearly every home could significantly cut heating and cooling costs if they upgraded their insulation.

Insulation comes in three basic forms ? flexible insulation, loose-fill insulation and reflective insulation. Flexible insulation is the most familiar, to wit, the rolls of pink stuff you see at construction projects. Loose-fill insulation comes in bags and is actually sprayed into walls. Reflective insulation is used like flexible insulation to fill stud walls, but works by using a material that reflects the radiating heat in a structure. There is also rigid insulation, but it is rarely used.

When considering insulation in your home, there are two key issues to address. First, the insulation in your home should have an ?R? value, which represents the insulations resistance to the transfer of heat. If you really want to cut utility costs, you should replace your current insulation with a brand that has double the R value you currently have installed.

A second issue to consider is coverage. You might be surprised to learn that insulation is missing in certain key areas of your home. Heat rises, so checking the insulation in your attic should be your first step. You should also consider placing a seal around the entrance to the attic from the interior of the home. This space is almost always unsealed and acts as a highway for heat to escape.

Insulation is hardly a sexy topic when it comes to home improvements. While it may be bland, improving it can save you thousands and thousands of dollars.