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.

Homeowners spend millions each year caulking, replacing windows & doors, and weather stripping to make their home more energy efficient. But, one of the biggest culprits of energy loss is the chimney.

When you have a fire in your fireplace, the chimney works great. It acts as a funnel and takes smoke and dangerous gasses away.

But, your chimneys work even when there is no fire. This is the easiest escape route for the warm air in your home. You can tell that air is escaping through your chimney if your chimney has cold air in it or if you feel powerful drafts from very small gaps in your windows or doors.

Cold air can't get in unless it is going out at the same speed.

How do you stop this?

1. Install a wood burning or pellet stove or fireplace insert. By installing a wood or pellet stove or insert you not only cut down on your energy bill by stopping the warm air from going up the chimney, but you also cut down on your energy bill in using  the new stove. Wood and pellet heat is a far more economical way to heat your home than oil, electricity or gas.
2. Insulate your chimney. By insulating your chimney you eliminate drafts. Stop the warm air from escaping the hole in your roof, and stop the cold air from coming in through other avenues when the air is no longer leaving your home. Boarding up your chimney makes your fireplace and eye sore, insulating your chimney is easy and efficient, and you fireplace still can look beautiful.