Home Insulation - Home Styles, Heat, and Insulation Materials

By its name, home insulation says it all – insulating your house from extreme cold or extreme heat. If you haven’t yet, insulating your home is simply to make your house warmer and comfortable. Insulating it is better than having heaters in winter (or air conditioners) to beat cold or heat.

Insulating your home may take some substantial expense. However, it is a one-time expense as compared to your heating expenses which you have to pay every year, year in and year out. With the insulation expense you made, you van be sure that it will pay for itself based on your yearly heating expense.

Different makes

These days, new homes are already built with good insulation standards compared to the old ones. (These may be houses built more than 20 years ago.) New owners of these old houses are retro-fitting them to improve their insulation quotient and improve their energy efficiency.

The new houses are insulated very well. Most are also done air-tight so they need not have a heating system. These days, the sun’s energy (coming from the windows) is being utilized to heat the homes with a bit of help from electrical equipments (whose costs are very minimal).

Heat transfer

Many people are still under the impression that heart goes up, and nowhere else. In the convection process, heat goes up. In reality, heat goes in all ways (five to be exact) that heat can move about or is transferred.

Conduction is the name of the heat transfer between solids. The heat you can feel if you are near a hot object is radiation.  This is an electromagnetic form of energy transfer like light, electricity or radio.

Convection

Convection is the movement of warm air (or other gases and water) to move up, while those that are cold (cold air or water) go down. The result is circulation of either air or water. This is the heating technique they use in heating radiators.

Evaporation is not usually connected with heat loss. However, you can see the water evaporating on a summer day after a heavy rain. If you perspire, and the air takes up some evaporated sweat from you, you feel cooler.

Draughts are also one way of losing heat, with the warm air from within the home is let out into the outside.

Materials

There are now many good materials to use as home insulators. They include the mineral and glass wools, and on a denser form as batts and slabs. These come in blankets and rolls. They have about 25% greater insulation index compared to the others.

Fortunately, there are now many good products for use as your home insulators. They include the common mineral and glass wools, and on a denser forms as batts or slabs. (They come in blankets forms or rolls.) Because of higher density, they have around 25% greater insulation.

Among the natural fibers, sheep’s wool is a good one, like cotton or hemp. Mineral and glass wools are also very good. All of these materials can make good home insulation. 

Wall Insulation - Some Practical Ideas

The walls of your house are one of the three most important parts (the others are the attic and the floor) that need insulation. During winter time, the wall insulation of your house will serve as hold to the heat and prevent warmth from escaping.

When insulated, your walls won’t feel ice-cold. Likewise, it will prevent condensation and the subsequent molds from forming. The main point is certainly the comfort of a home with the proper insulation of the walls.

Conditions

Homes that were built before 1972 usually do not have insulation in their walls. Some owners are not even aware their walls are empty and with no insulation.

During summer, the insulation of the walls will reduce the amount of heat coming in from the walls which helps maintain the coolness of your house. Most often referred to as the “hot walls”, the walls facing south and west are hit by the sun and heat them up.

When radiated by the sun, the heat radiates the house in turn, even after sundown. When these walls are insulated, the entrance of the heat into the insides of the house is dramatically reduced.

Insulating walls

Professionals and experts usually suggest that 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 main reason is the many holes needed to be drilled on the walls.

The insulation for the wall cannot be injected from the attic area or from any part underneath the house. There is need to drill holes on the face of the walls, either from the exterior or interior areas.   

The process

Holes (2-inches each) are drilled in each bay, and made every 16 inches across. The walls are then injected with insulation until full and then plugged with Styrofoam. The stucco patching is applied and each patch is floated to match the standard stucco texture.

The patches dry up in a day and is then primed and painted right after. Some house owners want to repaint the entire home, others want only to color match the paint and paint each patch.

The drilling is from either the interior or the exterior of the house. When deciding to do the work from the inside, it is best that the house is empty and prepared for exposure to dust. (Most would choose to do the insulation work from the exterior because of the dust.)

Uses

Insulating the exterior walls of the house is generally for thermal purposes which is to keep the house cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The main idea is keeping a thermal barrier between the inside of your house and the outside environment.

Insulating the walls between bedrooms or other rooms of the house, it is usually to sound proof or reduce the noise between rooms. It would be redundant to insulate rooms for thermal purposes when the whole house is already insulated. Wall insulation, however, can be done in most rooms of the house.

Earthwool - Exciting New Insulation Material

It is always exciting if a new product enters into a field with a formidable reputation preceding it. From Knauf Insulation, the new entry is earthwool, a new mineral brand of wool insulation. As per reports, it carries with it some improvements over the older mineral wool insulation materials due to its feel, easy handling and the minimal environmental impact.

Also, reports have it that the new product is designed mainly for thermal and acoustical applications. This carries air conditioning ducts, power and process environment, boiler stack installations, metal and masonry walls. Not to be left out are the wall and roof panel systems, curtain web assemblies and cavity wells. 

Features

Concluding several projects, the new material shows excellent thermal efficiency that can lower operating costs. It is lightweight, easy to handle and fabricate. Labor costs are also reduced due to its easy installation.

The emission is low in consideration to indoor air. Regarding acoustics, its excellent properties effectively reduce noise. The facings can also provide a good-looking finished appearance. More important, however, is its capacity as a vapor retardant.

Recycled materials

The new mineral wool is made from recycled glass bottles and is compression-packed to reduce transport emissions. It is also formaldehyde-free because the base is on rapidly-renewable materials instead of other chemicals that are petrol-based.

The resulting material is 70% less energy intensive. It also has no artificial colors or bleach and is comparable to the older glasswool insulation. The design is primarily geared for thermal and acoustical insulation.

It is best for heating the air conditioning ducts, metal walls, masonry walls, power and process equipments, and stack installations. The installations include boilers, as well as walls, roof and wall panel systems, and cavity walls.

Conservation

It is known to be carbon negative, which means that the insulation product recover the energy that it took to produce them in just a few days.

The material also contains sand, one of the world’s most abundant resources with a minimum of 50% recycle content. It reduced its Global Warming Potential (GWP) by around 4% of its carbon footprint.

It has no phenol, formaldehyde, acrylics or artificial colors. As certified by the UL environment for indoor air quality, the product is a low-emitter.

Advantages

The main advantages of the new product is that it is thermally efficient while at the same time is cost-effective. It is not combustible and can reduce unwanted noise from outside sources. It also can limit sound transmission from room to room.

It has a wide range of sizes and R-values and are available for use in wall and ceiling batts. The main advantage of earthwool is its being thermally efficient while being cost-effective in the overall expenses for energy.

Aside from being non-combustible, it can also reduce unwanted noise from outside the house (or building) and can limit the transmission of sound from one place to another.

If there is a need for vapor retarders, the penetration and facing damage shall be repaired with tapes or mastic. Earthwool as the new mineral wool looks like it is here to stay.

House Insulation - Best Options

House insulation has always been a necessity in colder places of the world all because of the extreme nature of the climate in both hot and cold weather. This is also triggered by the fact that maintaining comfortable temperatures inside the house can be expensive, not to mention that it is an ongoing yearly energy expense.

The expenses on insulating your residence can be considered an investment knowing that it is quite hefty. The consolation is that it is a one-time expense compared to the yearly payment to keep your house in comfort.

Areas  

For some consolation, there are only a handful of places that need to be insulated in your house. Obvious examples would be the attics and the walls.

With proper insulation, the ROI on your investment would be definitely raised. The reason is that the insulation on the critical parts of your house raises its total value. 

More places

The other areas that need insulation would be your ceilings with unheated spaces, the basement walls, the floors above the vented crawl spaces, the cathedral ceilings, and the floors over unheated garages and porches.

It is also wise to include insulating such areas like the knee walls and the in-between interior walls (like the bathroom). The goal is to envelop the entire house in insulating materials.

Sampler

One example of proper insulation would be the use of fiberglass. This material can keep your house cool during the summer months and keep it warm in winter.

The technology is simply that the insulation resists the flow of heat from one place to the other. As an energy form, heat moves out of the house in winter (looking for the cool places) and flows inside during summer (which is unwanted at the time).

Added advantage

There is an additional advantage in the use of fiberglass as insulating material. It keeps out the heat while at the same time it works as a sound absorber. Installed in walls and ceilings, the material can reduce (noticeably) the transmission of unnecessary sound.

This is an advantage these days as the surrounding environment in most places is getting unnecessarily noisier. Some house owners have separate sound proofing installations on their houses.

Types

The required insulation is defined in terms of the R value. This is the resistance value of a material to heat passing through it. The higher the R-value, the greater is the material’s insulating qualities.

However, choosing the insulation material strictly on its high R-value is not entirely correct. R-values of insulation for specific houses also depend on the local climate and existing building codes. You need to familiarize on their properties.

There are also other options with regards to these insulation materials for your house as there are varieties.  You can pick out fiberglass, mineral wool, cellulose, foam or cotton.

Options on materials

There are many varieties of insulation materials that you can use – fiberglass, mineral wool, cellulose, foam and cotton. (A manufacturer has just added a new mineral wool, earthwool in its line-up.)

Choosing the materials for your house insulation needs to include such factors as thermal grades (R-value), lifetime performance, fire safety, moisture among others.

Insulation - The Two Common Types

In layman’s terms, we think of insulation as the prevention of heat, cold or sound, from being transmitted from one place to another. With usage, it also refers to the materials that confine these natural phenomena (cold, heat or sound) in their places. (In electricity, we use rubber and other non-conductive materials to handle it safely.)

Insulation, as we know it, works in many ways. However, it is mostly composed of materials with millions of very small pockets of air. As it is, air is a good insulator that gives materials with trapped air in them their high thermal resistance. With the right densities, it even stops sound.

Thermal insulation

This is the type of insulation used in walls and ceilings, as well as the outside walls of houses where heat is usually lost (in cold seasons) or gained (in hot seasons). Basically, thermal insulation is to keep one side (the inside of a house) of the insulating material warmer than the other (the extreme cold outside).

In places where it is extremely hot or cold for long periods, your insulation design in keeping your house warm or cool (comfortable temperatures for people) should follow the climate changes. This usually is the case in temperate countries (with hot and cold seasons) and in other places where it is perpetually cold.

The thermal insulation is usually measured in “R values’ for its effectiveness. When the R value is higher, the thermal insulation it gives is better. RM is the total value of the thermal resistance of the materials used. RT is the total value of the heat resistance provided by the whole construction including the materials.

Sound insulation

Insulation is also applicable in controlling sound. At some points, the types of insulation used in thermal control also can control both sound and heat. These insulating properties (called acoustic insulation) are usually found in walls, ceilings, and floors.

However, specialized soundproofing (the other term for acoustic insulation) is usually applied to special places (theaters, recording studios) that need this type of insulation.

In places where extreme external noise is generated (highways, airports, train lines, factories), there are other specialized methods in keeping off the outside sound. Acoustic insulation measures are usually done on windows and other places in buildings that receive these unnecessary sounds.

Double work

Some people think that heat insulation can also stand in to do the job of sound insulation. In some ways, they can. However, the design tends to lean on one area or the other. Thermal insulation is best for temperature control.

On the other hand, acoustic insulation can control the pitch and volume of the sound from somewhere into entering, but it cannot guarantee that heat (or cold) is kept off. Depending on the construction of your house or of the materials used, or maybe your area, thermal insulation can sometimes take care and keep out the unnecessary acoustics (sounds). 

The best way to deal with these is to use thermal insulation for heat and cold matters, while acoustic matters should also be dealt with accordingly.