Cooling your house in the summer can make up over 50 percent of your energy bill. And if that bill is as high as the weather is warm, you should know how to find summer insulation issues in your house.
Proper insulation can lower the cost of cooling your home since the insulation acts as a barrier. If you can fix any insulation issues, then you will be able to keep cool while lowering your energy bill.
Where to Insulate Your House
You can’t find summer insulation issues if you don’t know where your house needs insulation. When fixing any insulation issues, consider a few essential areas that need a barrier. If you don’t have insulation in these places, you can easily fix it, and you might solve your entire problem.
One of the most important places to put insulation is in your attic. Even if you don’t spend much time there, it can hold a lot of heat, and you want to keep that heat from getting to your living areas. You should insulate the floor joists, and if your attic has one, you should insulate the access door.
Of course, you should add insulation to all the exterior walls. The exterior walls are the perfect place for hot air to get into your home or for cold air to escape. If you want to keep your home cool with insulation, all of your exterior walls need it.
You may also want to put insulation around your ducts. As the air moves through your ducts, you want to keep the cold air from getting out. So if you want to avoid losing excess energy, you need to insulate the pipes in your house.
Other Summer Insulation Issues
If you know that you have insulation in your attic, along the exterior walls and around your ducts, you may still notice insulation issues. You may have drafts in some of your rooms, or some rooms may be significantly hotter than others.
In these cases, you should examine the areas where you’re having the issue. Then, you can figure out if your insulation isn’t working or you need to replace it.
Drafts
If you feel a draft, there could be a problem with your attic. However, your walls, doors and windows might also be to blame. Check the insulation in the attic to make sure that it doesn’t have any leaks.
You should also make sure the doors and windows shut properly and that the insulation in the problematic room is okay. If something isn’t right, you can replace the insulation, or you can contact someone to redo your door or window to make it seal correctly.
Hot Rooms
If one room is much hotter than the rest of your house, odds are there’s a problem with the insulation. However, this may not be the case if the room in question is on the highest floor. To determine if a room has an insulation issue, compare it with rooms on the same level.
You can check the windows and any exterior doors in all of the rooms. And if that one room is still much hotter than the rest, you’ll know to look at the insulation.
Staying Cool
In some cases, you will know when you have a summer insulation issue in your home. Perhaps there’s one room that’s significantly hotter than the other rooms. Or maybe you feel a draft throughout your house.
However, you should also know where you already have insulation. If one room doesn’t have any, you can install foam insulation to see if that solves your issue. And if not, you can look at the various parts of your home to see where the problem might be.
