We’ve talked about your attic’s energy efficiency before…and for good reason. Your attic has a lot to do with your home’s energy efficiency, but it frequently gets forgotten.
After all, how much time do you actually spend up in your attic anyway?
Alright wise-guy. Maybe you’re one of the few who goes up there all the time. But most people never go up into their attic.
And believe it or not, there’s much more to an energy-efficient attic than insulation.
Find out what you can improve below:
Okay. So it does sound strange to let hot air in your attic. That doesn’t sound very comfortable, does it?
However, the source of that hot air is not the outdoors, but the other rooms in your home.
Ventilation lets that rising hot air from the rest of your home flow through and to the outdoors, rather than getting caught in your attic.
When hot air becomes trapped in your attic, this heats and damages your shingles, while also causing moisture to accumulate, which leads to the growth of mold and bacteria.
And of course, you’ll feel more uncomfortable. So, it’s best to get that hot air outside.
As its name suggests, a radiant barrier blocks hot photons found in the sun’s light, reflecting them back outdoors.
In hot climates, radiant barriers are installed between your roof’s joists because that keeps the sun’s light and the heat out entirely. In cooler climates, radiant barriers get installed between the floor joists of your attic so that heat reflects back into the attic, helping heat the home.
A properly installed radiant barrier offers the best energy efficiency in hotter climates, reducing cooling costs by as much as 5-10%.
Of the tips given today, this one’s probably the hardest. It can be awfully difficult to locate each crack in your attic’s air envelope.
In fact, it’s so hard it even presents a challenge to professionals.
If you’re ambitious, interested, and patient, you can try to find these cracks by using a smoke pencil or incense stick and moving it around the walls.
Sometimes, you’ll see the smoke obviously disturbed, indicating a slight draft.
Leaks are most commonly found in wiring holes, near open soffit, behind knee walls, and around recessed lights.
So, those are the three top things you can do to make your attic energy-efficient. And you can save big when you implement all three.
8:00am-6:00pm Mon-Fri
Closed on Saturday & Sunday
1-844-621-2852
8:00am-6:00pm Mon-Fri
Closed on Saturday & Sunday
1-888-234-1373