Texas Electricity | Texas Energy | Dynowatt
No matter how hard you try to resist, you're going to want to heat your home at some point in the colder seasons. While your windows and walls seem nice and solid, they're actually releasing a great deal of that expensive heat into the outside world. Unfortunately, it's impossible to completely eliminate this heat loss. That's just physics; hot air wants to flow to cold air. Thankfully, there are ways to minimize this inefficiency, and the most important is insulation.
Filling your home with insulation is a great idea for several reasons. If more of the heat your furnace generates remains inside your home, the appliance doesn't have to work as hard to keep you comfortable. Insulation also helps to keep your energy bill down; a wonderful thing because there are definitely plenty of other places where you'd like to spend your money. Insulation is also relatively inexpensive and pays for itself within months, if not years. Depending on the design of your home, insulation is also easy to install.
The effectiveness of insulation is determined by its R-value. The U.S. Department of Energy defines R-value as a measure of a particular insulation's resistance to heat flow. The recommended value varies, depending on the region in which you live. This makes sense; folks in the Northeast deal with much colder weather than those in the Southwest experience. (Homes in warmer regions still need to be insulated because of those cold snaps and because it's important to prevent cool, air-conditioned air from escaping.) Homes in southern Texas should probably fill their bare attic with insulation possessing an R-value between 30 and 60. Floors in that area should feature insulation with a rating between 13 and 19. Those in the middle of Texas are advised to be equipped with the same level of attic insulation, but should probably insulate their floors with R values between 19 and 25.
The type of insulation with which you're probably most familiar is the blanket type. Those are the big pink or yellow rolls of fiberglass you must cut and then unroll in between the beams in your attic. Fiberglass is a great insulator because it has countless little air pockets that trap hot and cold air, discouraging them from mixing. This slow type of heat transfer can be seen in, for example, a birthday cake. The air pockets hold their heat until you cut that first slice.
Loose-fill insulation is made of small bits of cellulose (plant matter) or fiberglass. Instead of being sold in rolls, this kind of insulation is sprayed where it needs to go, making it great for insulating walls. Instead of having to cut open your drywall, you can simply blow in the clumps of insulation using special equipment. (This is something you may want to have a professional do for you.)
If you're building a home or doing extensive work on an old one, you can use firmer, more permanent forms of insulation. One of the forms of insulation described by the Department of Energy is the Structural Insulated Panel. These are thick, dense building elements that provide even protection from the heat or cold. These SIPs are not for do-it-yourselfers who lack great confidence in their building skills because they are made to precise specifications. For people who are building their dream home from scratch, however, they're an option worth looking into.
Covering the exterior of a home with reflective system insulation can boost the energy efficiency of your walls and attic. These sheets of plastic, cardboard or other substances are tacked or stapled to a house's framing, adding another layer of protection from the elements. This, too, should be done during the original construction of the building.
Weather stripping is another kind of insulation, though it's a little different from the others. Instead of being planted in ceilings or blown between walls, weather stripping is a kind of insulation that, for example, you plant in the drafty areas in door jambs. You can screw plastic strips to the bottom of your door or invest in a roll or two of the kind of soft weather stripping that you simply stick onto the side of your door using its adhesive side.
No matter the sticker price of the insulation itself, blanketing your home in insulation is worthwhile, thanks to the long-term savings. Next time autumn rolls around, make blanketing your living space a part of your conservation plans.