In
countries where cold and heat can be extreme climate conditions, home insulation is a necessary action to make homes (including buildings) warm,
livable, and comfortable. Constructing the necessary structures to make your
home warm can reduce your annual costs of making your home comfortable.
The
initial expenses in making these insulating structures for the home can be a
bit expensive. However, this expense is a one-time event. This surely beats the
yearly expenses you need to fork over to heat your place with electricity.
After some time, your one-time expense will pay for itself.
Houses
It is
fortunate that houses these days are usually built with a good home insulation standards
compared to the older houses built around 20 years ago. For today’s new owners
of these older houses, retrofitting their structural insulation is the only way
to go to improve the energy efficiency of the houses.
The
insulation retro-fitting is necessary because older houses have run-down
insulation due to age and general wear and tear. (Some of the old houses are
also insulated inadequately in the first place.)
Sounds
For
added advantage as being an energy–saver, fiberglass insulation also works as a
sound absorber. When installed in walls and ceilings, it reduces the
transmission of unnecessary sound from one room to another, and from the
outside.
This
is advantageous since these days surroundings are getting noisier every day.
More home owners are also sound-proofing their homes for more comfort now that
the extraneous sounds can now be effectively reduced. (Some projects totally
eliminate the unnecessary sounds.)
Areas
There
are important areas that really need insulation inside your home. Examples that
come to mind immediately would be the attics and the walls. This definitely
increases return on investment (ROI) value. The insulation raises your home’s
value after you had invested in insulating the critical areas.
The
other areas that would also need insulation would include your ceilings with
unheated spaces, the basement walls, the floors above vented crawl spaces,
cathedral ceilings, floors over unheated garages or porches, knee walls, and
those in-between interior walls (bathrooms), ceilings or floors for extra sound
control.
The
amount of insulation your house needs depends on where you live. Look it up
from the files of the E.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy
Conservation Code to see how much your insulation needs would be.
R-values
R-values
are the measurement used to determine the insulation effectiveness of the
materials you are using. “R” stands for resistance to heat flow. The higher the
R-value for a material, the greater is the insulating power of that material.
In insulating materials available commercially, the R-values are usually
printed in the insulating materials.
Options on materials
Currently,
there are many varieties of insulation materials that you can use – fiberglass,
mineral wool, cellulose, foam and cotton. (A manufacturer has just added a new
mineral wool, earthwool in its line-up.)
When
choosing materials for your home insulation, they should possess the following:
thermal performance (R value), lifetime performance, fire safety, moisture, air
infiltration and environmental benefits.
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