Insulation Upgrade: When the Time Has Come

If you have an older home or if your energy bill is higher than you expected, you may need to assess how much insulation is in your home. To improve comfort and lower heating and cooling costs, it's essential to know when you're due for an upgrade.

Warning Signs 

Uneven temperatures—If temperatures vary from room to room, it could indicate your home may need additional insulation and possibly some air sealing.

Insulation should provide you with consistent temperatures throughout a home, so if you find yourself avoiding certain areas that are too hot or cold, you may need to add to your existing insulation, or possibly replace it altogether.

If you have rooms that remain cold at some points, no matter how much you try to warm the space, it’s likely that heat is escaping through places such as the attic, garage, windows or doors. Inspect windows and doors for air leaks or cracks that might be releasing air from your home.

Walls, floors and ceilings—Unusually cold room temperatures in cooler months can indicate it's time to reinsulate your home, but you can also gauge whether you need new insulation by touching your interior walls, floors and even ceilings. If any of these three places feel cold or moist, it could be an indication that they're not adequately keeping the heat in.

Well-insulated homes in the cooler months usually have warm and dry interior walls, floors and ceilings—meaning heat is being kept inside where it should be circulating. The walls on the outside of your home should feel colder since they’re preventing the warmer inside air from escaping your home.

High energy bills –Gradually increasing energy bills may be due to poor insulation.

Another possibility is that your heated air is escaping through cracks in the floor, walls, windows, under doors, or even through your roof. In any of these cases, your home's heating and cooling systems will work harder to ensure that you stay comfortable inside, which in turn could raise your energy bills considerably.

Save money (and energy) by performing an audit of your existing insulation and the air sealing of your home. As a house settles, gaps can show up under doors, in the floorboards and around windows. This is true of all homes but is particularly concerning in older houses that may have endured more wear and tear over the years. Apply caulking or low-expanding spray foam to seal leaks around windows. Install weather-stripping and or even new thresholds to tighten up leaky doors. Looking for small voids in these locations may seem insignificant compared to how large your house is, but they can cause a large waste in energy resources and money.

You can also schedule a formal energy audit at the time of a standard inspection before purchasing a home.

Anything frozen—As a general rule of thumb, if anything is frozen that shouldn't be, you likely have an insulation problem. For example, frozen pipes or "ice dams,” which are essentially icicles that you see trickling down from your roof and gutters during a cold winter, are signs of improper insulation. Not only are ice dams a safety concern and tough to clean out of your gutters, but they may also be a sign that your insulation isn’t as effective as it should be.

If your house is poorly insulated, the heat which rises out of your home through the roof melts the snow that's laying on top of it, creating water that then freezes over again as it falls off the unheated eaves or gutters and into the cold air. The ice dams can cause water to pond on the roof and risk a leak.

Immediate action requires eliminating snow from the roof to stop the formation of ice dams. For long-term and preventative measures, consider increasing the amount of attic insulation to cut down on heat loss. Check that your home meets or exceeds the state requirements for insulation levels.

Three Things to Know before Insulating

 Whether you're building a house, renovating a home or simply giving your insulation an upgrade, it's essential to know what to expect. Here are the three most important things to keep in mind:

What type of insulation is best for your home?

It all comes down to "R-value,” which has to do with the insulation's ability to prevent heat from escaping. Depending on the weather where you live and the area of your house you are insulating, you may need insulation with a higher or lower R-value.

The higher an insulation's R-value, the greater the insulation power. With this in mind, if you live in an area that has extreme temperatures, hot or cold, a higher R-value will be required to maintain your home's energy efficiency and comfort. You can check the appropriate R-value for your home based on where you live at Energystar.gov.

How to Choose the Right Type

There are essentially three different types of insulation that you can choose from to insulate your house, each with their own benefits depending on the area of the house you’re using it in.

Loose-fill, also referred to as blow-in insulation, offers excellent thermal control. This is installed with a portable blowing machine and is perfect for covering hard-to-reach areas, typically attics. (The machines are usually available to rent from the insulation supplier.) Blow-in insulation is easy to install in spaces of all shapes and sizes and doesn't require fitting or cutting. This type of fiberglass insulation also reduces sound transmission and is resilient to rotting, mildew and deterioration.

Batts are often used for insulating floors, walls and ceilings. They’re pre-cut for faster installation and are installed piece-by-piece for tight spaces or wall cavities with obstacles such as electrical wires.

Rolls, on the other hand, are perfect for insulating unobstructed spaces or rolling between ceiling joists and can easily be cut to fit whatever length is needed for the project at hand.

The latter two types of insulation are especially useful in significant house renovation or restoration projects, as these jobs often require total wall replacements and starting from scratch.

Where Should it Go?

Once you’ve decided on the type of insulation you need, you can begin to plan which areas of your home to insulate. Homeowners can save as much as 20 percent on their home’s heating and cooling costs simply by using the correct insulation in each space. Ideally, the whole house would be insulated including the attic, crawlspace and basement.

If you're looking to do a weekend insulation project, the attic is a great place to start. Blow-in insulation will fit those hard-to-reach areas and provide full coverage, while rolls are excellent to use between floor joists and provide quick coverage in those long, open areas. When insulating the attic, it may seem counterintuitive, but it is important to ventilate your house adequately so that moisture doesn't build up. With this in mind, make sure that the various vents in your attic aren’t blocked when installing insulation. This allows moisture to escape and avoids mold from developing.

For new room additions, pre-cut batts are a great choice because they easily fill the cavity of a standard 8-ft. wall by installing one piece from the bag. For different wall heights, rolls may be the better option as you can roll out the product. Simply measure it to the length you need, cut it to size, and then place the one piece of material in the cavity to fill it. Most batts include a paper stapling tab to fasten to the studs.

Johns Manville partnered with Company & Cottage to provide insulation for the renovation of a small barn into a hand-crafted cottage near Saugatuck, Michigan.

The barn pictured is being remodeled into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage with all new appliances and brand-new insulation. Renovating this 1907 barn required starting from the basics to transform it into a livable rental home for summer getaways.

Editor’s Note: This information appears courtesy of Johns Manville. To learn more about home insulation, visit www.jm.com.