Wall Insulation – Barrier for Heat and Cold

One of the three more important places to insulate your house is the walls. (The others would be the floor and the attic, completing the three dimensions.) When winter comes, the wall insulation will serve to hold the heat inside and make it comfortable.

Like everything else insulated, your walls won’t feel cold to the touch and would certainly keep the warmth inside for you and your family. It also prevents condensation and the following molds from forming later. The point is simply to keep comfort inside the home with the proper insulating of the walls.

Conditions

Generally, the houses that were built before 1972 usually don’t have insulation on their walls. Owners were clueless as to the type of walls they have. (Some are empty and with no insulation whatsoever.)

In summer, the insulating materials of the walls help reduce the amount of heat coming in from the walls. This helps maintain the cool atmosphere inside the house. Those walls that are facing south and west (known as “hot walls) are the ones hit by the sun and make them hot.

The heat they get will be radiated into the house in turn, and it goes on even after sundown. When these walls are insulated, the heat is reduced because the entrance into the insides of the house is reduced.

Insulation

The experts usually suggest that the insulation of the walls should be done when the house is about to be re-painted, doing the stucco again, or when it is about to be coated with texture. The rationale is that many holes are needed to be drilled onto the walls.

The holes will be properly covered during repainting or coating with texture. Also, the insulation of the wall cannot be injected from the attic or from any other part underneath the house. The holds had to be drilled on the face of the walls either from the exterior or the interior.

The work

There will be holes (2 inches each) that will be drilled on each bay and made every 16 inches across. The wall will then be injected with insulation until full and then plugged with Styrofoam. The stucco patching is applied and every patch is floated to match the standard stucco texture.

After the patches dry up in a day, the wall is primed and painted right after. Some owners want to repaint their entire house, while others would only want to color match the paint on each patch.

The drilling can be done on either side of the house (the exterior or the interior). It is best to have the house empty when doing the work from the inside. (Some would decide to do their insulation work from the exterior because of the dust.)

Insulating the exterior walls of the house is generally for thermal insulation to keep the house cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The insulation is keeping a barrier between the insides of the house and that of the outside. This is simply done through wall insulation.