Can Attic Insulation Help with Your Home's AC Efficiency?
Adding new insulation to your home can have a ton of great advantages, but while adding new insulation in the basement or walls is great, attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency and has the biggest cumulative and long term effect when it’s installed up top. Adding to your attic insulation helps improve your indoor temperature all year round, and has positive effects when it comes to maintaining your heat during the winter months as well. But choosing the right attic insulation to help with your home’s AC efficiency is a key part of gaining the benefits and energy savings insulation has to offer.
Which Attic Insulation Type Will Improve Your Home’s Air Conditioning Efficiency?
Types of Attic Insulation:
Attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency, but choosing the right type is the first step. There are four common types of insulation that may be installed in your attic.
Batt Insulation: This type of insulation is one of the most common types in homes 10-50 years old. These big puffy sheets of insulation are easy to install in walls, attics, and crawlspaces, and do well at retaining their R Value over time - they’re also inexpensive and easy to install, which makes them an attractive option for some homeowners.
Loose Fill/Blown in Insulation: There’s a reason that blown in cellulose is one of our most popular products - it’s one of the easiest and most versatile products to install in your home, and it is a great option for improving your attic. One of the reasons that loose fill attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency is that it is especially good for irregularly shaped spaces, since the many small pieces settle in and around ducts, joints, and corners.
Spray Foam Insulation: Our topic choice for attic insulation at EcoStar is spray foam insulation. There are two types of spray foam on the market today, open cell or closed cell spray foam, and both do a superb job of preventing heat loss, sealing against water and moisture, and acting as an air barrier. There’s no other insulation product on the market like it! For long term performance and great R Values, spray foam insulation is the best modern option for attics.
Rigid Board Insulation: It is the perfect type of insulation for places like under the roof sheathing, or below ground at the headers or under the slab. It does a decent job at slowing air and moisture flow, but must be cut exactly to size to ensure complete coverage.
What is the Problem with Your Insulation?
One of the major ways that attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency is by resisting heat infiltration during the summer months and preventing air conditioning from leaking into your attic. The problems with attic insulation arise when it is old or damaged. In the summer months, your roofing materials, such as asphalt shingles or metal sheeting, absorb heat from the sun and transfer that heat into your attic cavity. Without enough attic insulation, that heat puts a great deal of strain on your air conditioner, which must work harder to keep your home cool.
When your insulation is old or damaged, your cool air has no incentive to stay in your home, and it will leak into the attic cavity, leading to the same overworked air conditioning problems as well as a hot, sticky, and uncomfortable living space.
What are the Benefits of Attic Insulation?
Attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency and your overall home efficiency year round. It acts like a hat, keeping the worst of the sun off of your home in the summer and keeping you toasty in the winter. Most attics are the same footprint of your home, which can make for a pretty big space, especially if it’s pulling conditioned air into it from the rooms below. When you have the right amount of attic insulation in your home, you:
- Reduce your air leakage
- Experience reduced energy needs
- Lower the frequency of HVAC maintenance
- Save up to 20% on your monthly utility costs
Climate change is causing a shift in temperatures worldwide, as well as a need for more sustainable energy creation and consumption. Adding to or completely retrofitting your home’s insulation can have a huge effect on your indoor comfort by preventing heat loss and reducing your energy consumption, which, in turn, has a positive effect on the planet.
How Insulation Helps Maximize your AC Efficiency
Getting the most out of your air conditioner and the money you spend on heating and cooling your home is important. Attic insulation keeps the heat from infiltrating your home: when heat is absorbed into your shingles or attic, it doesn’t just stay there - it moves through your home through your wooden beams, walls, and air leaks. Have you ever put a hand on the sidewalk at night and still felt how warm it was? The materials we build our homes with retain a lot of heat, and insulation helps prevent this heat from reaching the rooms in your home.
Attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency by keeping the cool air in your rooms and out of your attic. Leaking air is one of the biggest reasons homes are energy inefficient, and, by taking simple measures to seal cracks and gaps and improve your insulation, you can greatly increase your home’s energy efficiency.
Why Choose EcoStar for Your Attic Insulation Needs
At EcoStar Insulation, we know that picking the right insulation for the needs of your home is hard - which is why we try to make it easy for each and every one of our customers by thoroughly explaining all the options available. After years of experience in attics big and small, we know that each attic has its own unique set of needs based on the location, shape, and size of your home. When it comes to knowing which attic insulation helps with your home’s AC efficiency, trust the experts at EcoStar Insulation. Contact us for more information.
