Lots of Action in the Attic!
Air leaks out of your home, heat is lost by conduction, rooms are unbearable from the blazing hot roof and attic, and ducts lose cold and hot air on their way to intended destinations -they all happen in the attic! If this sounds familiar, we want to help make your home more comfortable and energy efficient.
Identify the Leaks-- Is the Attic to Blame?
First and foremost-- how much air does your home leak? At Dr. Energy Saver our equipment will tell us exactly how much air your home leaks and where. The average home leaks 50% to 100% more than it should! This means that when your heating or air conditioning system gets your home up to temperature and the thermostat turns it off, that the air that you just paid to heat and cool just leaks outside! A disproportionate amount of this leakage is to the attic! Even worse, new outside cold or hot air leaks in at the bottom of your house to replace the air that left. A recent job we did in Cheshire showed this very thing-- major air leakage problems causing the homeowners uncomfortable rooms.
Dr. Energy Saver, offers air sealing in Wallingford, Seymour, Hartford, and all nearby locations! This is part of an overall strategy to rid your home of the comfort problems you have, no matter where in Connecticut you are located.
Attic Insulation Done Right
Insulation in your attic is important because warm air rises. An attic is cold because it's vented. If the drywall ceilings are cold, they continually pull heat out of your conditioned space and that heat is lost. Proper insulation is the answer, but ONLY after proper air sealing has been completed.
Installing insulation in an attic without air sealing is considered malpractice. Insulation doesn't stop air flow. Once insulation is installed, it makes it very difficult to go back and seal the holes in the ceiling and walls assemblies, can lights and electrical and plumbing chases afterwards because you can't find them. Why would anyone insulate without air sealing? Because insulation is the easy part - and air sealing is more difficult. The average homeowner may think they are getting something good - a nice blanket of insulation. But the reality is that air sealing and insulation should always be done together (air sealing first) and of the two if you had to pick, air sealing is the most important.
Dr. Energy Saver recently fixed a home in Newtown CT where the homeowner had previously hired someone to install insulation without air sealing - with no beneficial effect.
What NOT to Have in the Attic
Ducts or air handlers (furnaces, air conditioning, hydro-air systems) located in attics are a very bad idea and big energy wasters. On a hot summer day, the outside of ducts can reach 140 degrees like one house we worked in recently in Woodbury CT. Attics are very hot in summer and very cold in winter.
Ducts are the opposite. When you run ducts in an attic, heat will move from more to less as the laws of thermodynamics demand. This means warm ducts will lose heat to a cold attic in winter, and heat will be added to air conditioning ducts struggling to distribute cold air to rooms in the summer. Dr Energy Saver employs strategies such as duct sealing, adding insulation, and even making attics into conditioned space so no such heat exchange to or from ducts occurs in the attic. We completed one of our "SuperAttic™" jobs in Plainfield CT and would love to show you what the customer said - a vast improvement!
How the Attic Affects Your Roof
Ice damming is caused when heat escapes from your home and melts snow on the roof. The water runs down the roof to the eaves where there is no more heat because the eaves hang over the warm attic, and then refreezes. The block of ice at the roof edge eventually blocks the flow of water off the roof, and water backs up under the shingles and leaks into the house. But you don't want heat to leak out of the house into the attic to warm the bottom of the roof in the first place! All the strategies mentioned will prevent ice damming as well as make your home more comfortable and lower your heating and cooling bills forever.
Dr. Energy Saver often reflects summer solar heat with radiant barriers for homes that won't cool on the upper floors in the summer, like a home in Seymour CT we recently completed on Mountain Road. How powerful is the sun? On an 85 degree day your roof can heat up to 150 degrees and your attic to 125 degrees! This heat raidates down through the ceiling and into the rooms on the uppermost floors of your home - and it doesn't cool off until hours after the sun goes down.
It's clear - your attic is where lots of energy action is taking place - and where lots of corrective action will need to be done to solve the comfort problems you face.
Temperature differences room to room? High fuel and electric bills? Dust, mold and allergies indoors? Cold floors? Dr Energy Saver offers free estimates for attic insulation in Danbury, Hartford, Ansonia, and all surrounding areas! All the work we do pays for itself - and we even have easy financing. I'm Larry Janesky, president of Dr. Energy Saver. We'd love to help you! 1-800-328-1081
