Home Improvement: Energy Audits and Insulation

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• Choosing The Right Insulation Depends On A Home’s Needs

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  Home insulation is one of those things that people tend to take for granted until something goes wrong. But without good insulation, ar home can be uncomfortable no matter what the season.

  Without proper insulation, energy bills are likely higher than they need to be. A recent Wisconsin State Journal article states that heating costs are projected to be on the rise this year as it is.

  John Freiburger, with Freiburger and Associates in Fitchburg, said that the main purpose of insulation is to “offer resistance to thermal loss.” Insulation is labeled with an R-value, and that is one factor to consider when choosing the right insulation for your project. According to the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association, “R-value is the measure of how well insulation resists the flow of heat or cold. Higher R-values mean greater insulating power.”

  Looking back a few centuries, house construction was very different than it is today. Materials included timber frame, wattle and daub and bricks, but no insulation.

  “All we had was the mass of the house,” Freiburger said.

  The mud and other materials slowed down the loss of heat, but didn’t stop it.

  It was only in the beginning of the 20th Century when builders realized that there were certain materials that would effective keep the heat in, or out, depending on the season. That was the start of insulating homes.

  Today, there are many different types of insulation that are used. Freiburger said there are “all kinds of plastics that we’re using, (like) extruded or expanded, spray-in-place urethane, sheet products, even urethane sheet products with heat mirrors on them.”

  Freiburger said that in older houses, it is often cellulose insulation, since that was one of the first materials found to work well. He remarked that even in his own home from the 1850s, they had figured out that dead air spaces resisted that thermal loss that we want to minimize. So, sometimes, when a person removes a plaster wall in an older home, they may find that space between the walls further divided by another plaster barrier.

  Host Larry Meiller shared that many years ago, when he rented an old farm house, he found newspaper stuffed in the walls as insulation.

  Freiburger said that actually, recycled newspaper in a more high-tech form is one of his favorite current insulation products. He shared that when newspapers are sent to a recycling center, they can be ground up, covered with a fire treatment, “and then we use it in our walls and in our attics, and we get about an R3 per inch out of discarded newspaper.”

  There is no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to insulation. Frieburger said that insulation comes in higher or lower R-values, and people need to take some care in what they use. A higher R-value, meaning more insulating power, isn’t necessarily the best choice if the material traps moisture and that’s a concern for a home because of the building materials, like stone.

  “So instead of spray polyurethane, which has a higher R-value, but traps moisture, so a person might want to go with fiberglass,” he said.

  “It isn’t as good R- per inch, but it breathes,” he said. “We really need to look at homes as living, breathing machines. We almost need to look at them like animals. They shed moisture, they breathe in and they breathe out, and they develop heat through their furnaces, and they try to retain that.”

  The U.S. Department of Energy has useful information on their website about all aspects of home insulation.