What Parts of My Home Need Insulation the Most?

Insulation isn’t just for the walls in your home; it really should be used top to bottom. Unfortunately, many homeowner miss insulating some key areas of their home, leading to a decrease in comfort and an increase in energy costs. While it’s easy to say that your entire home should be insulated from roof to basement, it’s more beneficial to take a look at the areas that can be overlooked or missed entirely when installing or adding new insulation to your home:

The Attic

Your attic space, particularly if it is unfinished, can be a vacuum for energy year-round. Why? Insulation slows the transfer of heat. If your attic isn’t well-insulated, it is the place where warm air will move to during the winter and where hot air will invade during summer. Warm air always moves into cool-air spaces and insulation helps reduce this transfer of energy. By properly insulating your attic, you do two things at once: form a barrier to keep the air outside from coming in, and reducing the transfer of your indoor air to the wide, open space of your attic.

Crawl Spaces

The question of whether or not to insulate a crawl space depends on the type of crawl space you have: ventilated or unventilated. This is because crawl spaces that are ventilated are the ones that need insulation. The reason a crawl space will have ventilation is to help reduce moisture levels. Unfortunately, during the cold months, these vents allow cold air to blow through; this is why it’s important to insulate ventilated crawl spaces. If you have an unventilated crawl space, the radiant heat from your home will be contained in the crawl space, so you shouldn’t experience the same kind of drafty, cold floors one can experience with a ventilated crawl space.

Ductwork

If your ductwork resides in a space that isn’t conditioned by heating or cooling, in whole or in part, those portions of ductwork should be sealed and insulated. The reason for this is that ductwork can lose latent heating and cooling while in operation if they reside in an unconditioned area.

One of the best ways to assess whether or not your home has the right amount of insulation is to work with a trained professional.

The experts at Goettl Good Guys Air Conditioning have been helping customers install insulation since 1939, so call us today!