Custom Insulation Blog

There are many ways to increase your home’s efficiency for the upcoming winter. Properly insulated homes have significantly lower heating and cooling bills. However, often homeowners do not think of insulation when looking for ways to lower their heating costs.

Your attic may be insulated, but check out your attic access way. In the form of a hatch, pull-down stairs, or a knee-wall door, attic accesses often go uninsulated. This gap in the attic insulation increases heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer.

Also, attic accesses often aren't sealed properly. A 1/4-inch gap around the perimeter of an attic access can leak the same amount of air supplied by a typical bedroom heating duct.

Knee walls are often found in houses with finished attics, they are vertical walls with attic space directly behind them. These walls are usually leaky and often uninsulated. A knee wall and the attic floor in the attic space behind it should be properly insulated and air sealed.

Properly insulating air ducts located in unconditioned spaces such as attics, crawl spaces, garages, or unfinished basements can also help improve your home's energy efficiency.

Air ducts supply conditioned air from your space heating and cooling equipment to your living spaces. They also return an equal volume of air back to the equipment to be conditioned again. Ducts are typically made out of thin metal materials that easily conduct heat. Therefore, uninsulated or poorly insulated ducts in unconditioned spaces can lose 10%–30% of the energy used to heat and cool your home.

If you properly insulate your crawl space—in addition to air sealing and controlling moisture, you will save on energy costs and increase your home's comfort.

Contact Custom Insulation for more information on making your home more energy efficient.

The movement toward green technologies has been widely discussed recently, as more companies and consumers have looked for ways to become more ecofriendly.

One such green, energy-saving technology not receiving much fanfare is spray foam insulation, which contractors apply through high-pressure pumps, which then expands within cracks and various crevices to block any areas that air flows through.

Custom Insulation provides this advanced type of insulation as well as bio-based fiberglass batts.

 With three solutions now available, spray foam, blown in and blanket insulation, they have the ability to work with various clients.

There are places where blanket insulation is best, others places where blown in is best and then there are places where they will advise using spray foam. And all three products may even be used on the same house.

The efficiency of the insulation can lead to greater long-term savings. Within three to five years, most home or building owners witness this increased savings.