Winter is coming, and it’s important to be able to keep your house warm. One of the best ways of maintaining home comfort is with proper insulation. Heat rises, so if you don’t have enough insulation, the warmth from your furnace will flow right out of your home and into your attic. Insulation slows that flow of heat, keeping it inside your home longer and helping your furnace operate more efficiently.
How do you know if you have enough insulation in your attic? Here are five steps to checking your home insulation levels.
- Start with a basic eyeball test. Look at how much insulation you have. Can you see your floor joists? If you can’t, then you probably have enough insulation. If you can see them, you should add some more. Insulation tends to settle over time, so even if you had enough when you put it in, you may still need more now.
- Look for uneven places in your insulation. Is it evenly distributed throughout, or are there some areas where the levels are lower than others? Particularly around the edges of the attic, insulation levels can get too low.
- If you want a more precise measurement of exactly what your home insulation levels are and how much more you may need, then use a tape measure to measure the insulation’s depth.
- Look for the R-value of your current insulation. The R-value is a measurement of how much heat resistance your insulation provides over a certain area. The R-value should be written on the package. The higher the number, the better the heat protection.
- Multiply the R-value of your insulation by the number of inches deep it is to find the total R-value for the entire attic. For example, if you have three inches of R-15 insulation, your whole attic’s R-value would be R-45. The recommended insulation levels for Ohio are between R-50 and R-60.
Do you have enough or do you need to add more? For more help with your home-insulation levels, contact us at Ace Hardware Home Services. Dayton trusts us to provide for all of its home-comfort needs.
