Properly insulating your home will not only help reduce your heating and your Utah air conditioning costs but also make your home more comfortable. You need insulation in your home to provide resistance to heat flow. The more heat flow resistance your insulation provides, the lower your heating and cooling costs.
Heat flows naturally from a warmer to a cooler space. In the winter, this heat flow moves directly from all heated living spaces to adjacent unheated attics, garages, basements, and even to the outdoors. Heat flow can also move indirectly through interior ceilings, walls, and floors—wherever there is a difference in temperature.
During the cooling season, heat flows from the outdoors to the interior of a house. To maintain comfort, the heat lost in the winter must be replaced by your heating system and the heat gained in the summer must be removed by your cooling system. Properly insulating your home will decrease this heat flow by providing an effective resistance to the flow of heat.
A lack of insulation in the attic altogether is a serious energy deficiency considering that heat escapes upward. This will drive your heating and Utah air conditioning bill up. Pollution then occurs when this happens.
Insulation’s resistance to heat flow is measured or rated in terms of its thermal resistance or otherwise called, R-value. R-value measures resistance to heat flow. The higher the R-value, the higher the resistance will be.
A certain number of inches of attic insulation really won’t tell you much. What you really need to know is the R-value of the material. If the insulation is blown fiberglass, that given number of inches may be R-30., if it’s cellulose, that same measurement may be as much as R-45. Each material, and often each brand of the material, has a different R-value.
In newer homes there must be insulation installed in the attic area as per Title 24 of the energy efficiency codes. This should be a minimum of R-30 rated with the thickness. It varies depending upon the type insulation in place.
In both old homes as well as new ones, the condition of the insulation and the way it is installed will affect the way that it performs. You may not need as much in the valleys as you do in the mountains. But to improve your Utah air conditioning, you want to make sure you have properly installed insulation.
