Do You Have Poor Home Performance?
Did you know that your attic can be the reason why your upstairs bedrooms are too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter? It can also be the reason you have high energy bills. So how can you tell if you have poor “home performance”?
The areas of our homes that we see the least often can have the greatest impact on how we feel every day in the areas that we spend the most time in. Most attics are insufficiently or ineffectively insulated. Older homes in this area often have less insulation in the attics than is needed to properly insulate the home. This can happen over time, as insulation settles and as external air is able to work into an attic, bringing dirt, allergens and often unwanted pests with it. Many newer homes are built very quickly and with the least expensive materials available: Meeting “code” does not mean using the highest-quality materials.
Improving the quality of insulation in your attic can greatly impact not only your home’s comfort, but also the cost to heat and cool a home year-round. “Air sealing” is the most important step in any attic project. Eliminating the ability for air to move freely in and out of an attic, and keeping conditioned air in the rooms of a home that it is intended to heat or cool, can help reduce energy costs by as much as 25% in most homes.
Giving attention to the HVAC ducts in an attic can have a similar effect. Imagine a metal HVAC duct running through an attic in Northern VA in February. It could be 20 to 30 degrees in the attic, and if that metal HVAC duct has heated air trying to travel through it, the attic air is a “hostile environment” for the heated air created by the HVAC system. By the time the heated air passes through the cold HVAC duct, it is no longer at the temperature it needs to be to heat the rooms of the home. This can cause people to turn up the heat or to have their system running more often than it needs to. HVAC ducts in an attic should be sealed to prevent conditioned air from escaping, and should be insulated with either spray foam insulation or wrap insulation, or be buried in cellulose blown insulation.
These are just a couple of examples of how the space in your home that you don’t always see, can have a significant impact on a homeowner or resident.
Dan Bomar
Marketing Manager for Comfenergy and 3 Pros Basement Systems
www.comfenergy.com www.3prosbasementsyatems.com
There are few businesses in our field in Northern Virginia. Most of our competitors do not take the time to look at the science of each home like we do. Finding design flaws and common issues in neighborhoods with the same home builder has made us very popular with some HOAs and neighbors who like to share with one another. Teaching our clients about how their homes work is always rewarding. The “lightbulb moment” when they learn something they hadn’t realized about their home before is always fun. Operating for almost 10 years, we have helped thousands of homeowners and businesses become more comfortable and more energy efficient. Most of our services will pay for themselves via energy savings in 5 to 10 years, and we offer a generous referral bonus for clients that tell their friends about us.