Your home. There’s not a better place to be. But there’s a good chance your house isn’t the most energy efficient. The easiest place to start adding insulation is in your attic. In fact, depending on where you live, the U.S. Department of Energy recently increased its insulation recommendation to up your R-60 in attics! Without this level of insulation, your home won’t be up to par in its energy performance.

So how do you make the temperature just right-in every room, all year round? Let us install Owens Corning PINK™ Fiberglas™ Insulation in your attic. It’s an easy and affordable way to enjoy a more comfortable home.

Why Attic Insulation?

Did you know that most homes are under-insulated?  It’s true. But there is an easy and affordable way to make a home more comfortable and lower the energy bills – just add insulation and air seal. Installing Owens Corning Insulation comes with a number of great benefits which we will go into more detail in a bit, but generally speaking adding insulating your attic:

• Keeps homes warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer
• Saves up to 20%³ on heating and cooling energy bills
• Lowers energy consumption and helps save our natural resources
• Allows you to enjoy the peace of mind that comes with using Owens Corning PINK™ Fiberglas™ Insulation

Even if your home was just recently built with the newer minimum efficiency standards, you could probably still benefit from adding even more insulation given the harsh Houston summers. After all, the more insulated your home is the more money it can save you on energy bills and wasted cooling. 

You may be questioning if your home really can benefit from improved insulation and we have some pretty convincing reasons why you should bolster or replace the insulation in your home—specifically the attic.

Your Home Was Built Pre-1980 

We’ve already covered that most homes are not insulated well enough for maximum energy efficiency. In fact, the actual percentage of under-insulate homes in the US is downright staggering. In a research study conducted in partnership with the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association (NAIMA), it is estimated from that data, that approximately 90% of all existing homes in the United States are under-insulated. This is especially true for homes built before 1980 when tougher EPA laws and consumer demands for more efficient home construction made the industry insulate new homes better to meet consumer needs. 

Consumers were fair and just in demanding better insulate homes. Under-insulated homes waste precious resources as well as become a financial drain on homeowners, has a negative impact on the environment, and can make a home routinely uncomfortable. Often times, the biggest culprit of energy loss and loss of cooling and heat is a poorly insulated attic. Adding insulation to a home’s attic is the quickest way to boost energy efficiency in Houston homes.

Insulation Ensures A Comfortable Climate

When you have insufficient insulation, you can rest assured you will have home temperatures that are all over the place. Too hot, too cold, too humid, or too dry, never just right. It could also be that one part of the house such as your bedroom may be significantly warmer than the living room which may be ice cold. Air leaks due to poor air seals are also a major culprit usually working in tandem with insufficient insulation to make your home quite uncomfortable. If your home, especially your attic, is properly insulated and sealed, you can ensure that your home is comfortable all the time, and from room to room, the temperature stays consistent.

Safety

As with the other structures in your home, insulation breaks down, wears out, and also can get damaged by rodents, moisture, roof leaks and more. The part of the house this goes unseen the most is the attic. Because you generally don’t go in the attic, insulation problems there can often go unnoticed because they’re “out of sight, out of mind.” Houston storms can give your roof a beating and you may develop a small leak that you never notice because it doesn’t penetrate the ceiling. However, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t damaged and broken down the insulation in your attic. The insulation can soak that moisture up and then with the tropical Houston climate, you can develop a very serious mold and mildew problem. When mold spreads it’s often hard to stop and eats away at your attic while also causing you to breathe in dangerous mold spores that can wreak havoc on your respiratory system, especially in children and the elderly.

Attic Insulation Helps with Noise Reduction

Houston is a huge city and with such a large population comes condensed residential areas and a lot of noise pollution. Noise from both inside your home and outside your home can be significantly reduced by bolstering the insulation in your attic as well as the walls. You will notice that with better attic insulation, wind noise will be reduced, HVAC unit noise, and other environmental noises will all but cease to exist in some cases. 

Increasing Your Home Value

If you plan on selling your home in the near future or just want to maximize your home’s value, adding or replacing insulation to increase home efficiency is a huge selling point. Like other home improvement projects such as replacing a roof, adding siding, or installing replacement windows; a well or even “over-insulated” home is a good benefit to attract buyers.

How Do You Know If Your Attic Insulation Needs To Be Replaced?

It’s pretty much an accepted fact that your attic should be insulated with a proper amount of coverage and properly sealed. The question that many homeowners ask us is how to tell when their attic is indeed under-insulated or the existing insulation as worn out? Chances are if you’ve noticed that your heating bills have been steadily increasing, you feel excessive heat coming from your attic in the summer, or if you notice cold drafts coming from the attic—you likely need new attic insulation.

Even when you have a brand new home, don’t assume you have efficient insulation. As with most mass construction homes, contractors cut corners as much as legally possible and barely meet required building codes. More often than not, contractors building new homes will push the envelope on those building codes and use substandard windows, less than ideal amounts of attic insulation, and sometimes just flat out take shortcuts that can cost you a lot of repairs down the road. 

As experts in both air conditioning in Houston and insulation installation, we can tell you that if you have noticed the following signs below—you definitely need to have your attic insulation inspected and probably replaced.

Unusually High Energy Bills

Look at the annual usage summary from your utility provider over the last few years. If you see huge increases that is your first red flag. Even if you don’t notice a huge temperature difference in your home, numbers don’t lie and if your energy usage is spiking then you definitely have a problem with energy retention and the culprit is often insulation that is worn or you are lacking sufficient insulation.

Ice Dams

While this may sound like some really cool phenomenon of nature out in the Alaskan wilderness; ice dams are quite common in poorly insulated homes. Ice dams occur when heat, due to poor insulation in the attic rises up and melts the bottom layer of snow on the roof. The water ends up draining towards the gutters and freezes once hitting cooler air. The end result is clogged gutters due to chunks of ice known as ice dams. Now, granted, the likelihood of this happening in Houston is slim to none, but then again we had significant snow in Houston even towards the end of winter in recent years—so nothing is impossible. 

Wild Inconsistencies In Temperature

One of the most obvious signs of a poorly insulated home is a sign you can feel. When you have several different rooms that are several degrees cooler or warmer than the other, it’s a clear sign of insufficient insulation somewhere in the home. It is important that all areas of your home are sufficiently insulated, especially the attic as it bears the brunt of the suns heat. 

Cold And Damp Walls

Your ceiling, walls, and floors in a properly insulated home should feel dry to the touch and warm. If they feel somewhat damp or cold to the touch, that is a clear indication that your insulation needs replacement or it is insufficiently insulated.

Air Leakage/Drafts

Most noticeable during the colder months, drafts in areas of your home usually come from around doors and windows. If there is not enough insulation around those openings, cold air will find its way in and your heating bills will go up considerably. 

Don’t wait. We have everything you need to get started today on Attic Insulation!

Need to make sure your attic is insulated properly? Give Airteam a call! We’ll start with a free, professional insulation inspection. And as experienced contractors, we can also install your insulation quickly and properly. Airteam is committed to giving you and your family the most energy-efficient home possible with our quality insulation and HVAC products.

² http://www.naima.org/pages/benefits/publichealth/publichealth.html
³http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_sealing.hm_improvement_methodology Savings vary. Find out why in the seller’s fact sheet on R-values. Higher R-values mean greater insulation power.