Attic Insulation

Attic Insulation For Your Home
by Kathy Lambert

When designing and constructing any new home, particularly a environmentally friendly home, the attic space is one of the most significant places to insulate in order to maximize energy efficiency, and reduce energy bills. Being one the basic spaces to insulate for either a new or existing home, the attic is a prime location for you to take major swings at your energy consumption.

Insulation Types To Use For Ventilated Attics

In a traditional vented attic, insulation is placed in the floor of the attic to insulate the ceiling from the seasonal heat or cold, and keep conditioned or heated air in the living space below. The remainder of the attic space above the insulation and below the roof rafters is uninsulated and is generally ventilated through roof or gable vents. There are countless insulation products that are now available to the homeowner for use as attic insulation.

Batt or Blanket Attic Insulation

Batt-type insulation is formed in rolls of blanket insulation that is trimmed and placed between the floor joists of the attic floor. Fiberglass is the material that is the popular choice for batt and blanket insulation varieties. Check to make sure that the fiberglass insulation products you are considering contain recycled glass content. For the ultimate in Eco-friendly batt materials, look for insulation using recycled materials. For instance Rockwool is produced from recycled steel slag or natural stone and cotton batts are produced from recycled textiles. Both of these varieties of insulation are very good decisions for a green home. All forms of batt insulation have roughly the same R-value per inch of about 3.0 to 4.0.

If you are planning on making the batt insulation attic project a do-it-yourself project, be sure you protect yourself with proper clothing, eye protection, and breathing masks. Most often batt insulation is best left to the professional installers as they are very efficient and cost competitive.

One of the bigger challenges of batt-type insulation is that it is quite easy to leave gaps between adjacent rolls as they are placed between the floor joists, reducing the insulation efficiency.

Loose-Fill Insulation

Another very popular and simple to install attic insulation is loose-fill insulation. Most often installed by an insulation contractor, loose fill insulation has the advantage of providing total coverage of the attic floor and covering the attic floor structural members. The advantage of this sort of attic insulation over the batts is the quality of coverage and the minimizing of cracks and gaps. This insulation is a very popular option for both new construction and retrofits.

Loose-fill insulation is available in a wide rage of materials including, rockwool mineral fiber, fiberglass fibers, and cotton fibers. Another great option for loose-fill insulation material is cellulose, which is produced from recycled newspapers and magazines.

Loose-fill insulation can settle over time, particularly if blown-in dry, which will gradually reduce its efficiency. Even though loose-fill is very easy for a professional to install, care must be taken to install it at a consistent and uniform depth and install it to an uniformly effective depth.

Spray Foam Insulation

For a higher level of insulation performance of Attic Insulation, investigate using one of the spray foams.

Sprayed into place on the attic floor by a professional contractor, foam insulation can provide R-values per inch approaching 7.0.

If you wish to have a superior product that blocks air leakage and outperforms other forms of insulation by entirely covering and filling all areas of the attic, then you should pursue spray foam attic insulation. Unlike loose-fill insulation, spray foam hardens in place and will not settle or contract over time.

Spray foam insulation does have higher initial installation costs, but when you investigate the long term performance and the insulation values, it is a very serious consideration for attic insulation. As good as the spray foam insulation types are, there is a downside, especially on the environmental end of things. Foams are typically produced from petroleum products, but there have been some good foams produced from soybeans that have gained a outstanding deal of notoriety.

Spray Foam Insulation in Non-Ventilated Attic Space

Although most attic spaces are ventilated in order to save energy and evacuate damaging moisture build-up in the structural elements, there has been a movement toward using attic insulation in non-ventilated type attics. This growing trend is a technique that is used in areas that experience very high summer temperatures.

You ought to carefully investigate what kind of attic insulation you would like based on cost, environmentally friendliness, payback and expected energy performance and discuss this with your home builder and Eco-friendly home designer.

Article Source Attic Insulation
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