Everyone knows that insulation is important for keeping a Chicagoland home warm in the winter. But did you know that you can also keep a house cool with insulation during the summer? Insulation is essential for year-round comfort and energy efficiency, and you don’t have to wait until the temperatures drop to update yours.
Here, we’ll explain how insulation protects your home from summertime heat and humidity, what benefits you’ll enjoy from upgrading, and why it’s so important to hire an insulation contractor with a deep understanding of building science.
How Insulation Helps Fight Summer Heat
Insulation’s main purpose is to serve as a thermal barrier. It slows the transfer of heat energy between the outdoors and the indoors. During the winter, insulation primarily helps retain heat inside the home, preventing it from seeping outdoors through the walls and studs. In the summer, insulation helps keep hot outdoor air from permeating into the residence.
Does Attic Insulation Help With Cooling?
The best place to install insulation for summer weather is usually in the attic because this is where the sun’s radiation hits the hardest. Once heat enters the top of a home without proper attic insulation, it can quickly spread and warm up other areas of the house. This is why it’s so common to experience upper floors that are hotter than the rest of the home.
Other places where insulation can be beneficial are within wall cavities and basements. If heat enters the lower areas of your home, it will naturally rise throughout the rest of the residence.
The Importance of Air Sealing Alongside Insulation
Alone, insulation isn’t enough to fully stop heat from entering the home. If there are any gaps in the building structure, hot air has a direct pathway into your living space. Some of the most common places that these air gaps exist include recessed lighting, attic hatches, attic knee walls, and basement rim joists.
Air sealing blocks off these gaps, ensuring that hot outdoor air can’t find its way inside. Besides temperature control, this is also very important for moisture control. Chicagoland’s hot summers come with lots of humidity. When hot, humid air enters your air-conditioned home, it touches cool surfaces and reaches the dew point, where it then condenses and releases moisture droplets. If left unchecked, this moisture can lead to mold growth and wood rot. Closing air gaps can help prevent this.
Comfort Benefits and Energy Savings
When considering insulation, most people’s first question is “Will insulation keep my house cooler?” The answer is almost always yes, but the benefits don’t stop there. Besides a cooler and more comfortable home, your family will also enjoy:
- Consistent Comfort: Insulation and air sealing help keep the entire home evenly cooled. Your upstairs bedroom won’t feel dramatically hotter than the rest of the house.
- Lower Energy Costs: Air conditioning is expensive, regardless of whether you have a window unit or central air system. Insulation reduces how much your AC runs, which saves energy and ultimately reduces your electricity bill. Year-round, the EPA estimates that insulation and air sealing can reduce heating and cooling costs by 15%.
- Less HVAC Wear and Tear: When you reduce how much you use your central air, you also reduce how frequently it needs repairs. Less wear and tear means fewer expensive breakdowns.
Why You Should Hire a Building Science Expert for Insulation
Upgrading your insulation for summer isn’t as simple as just adding more material where it lacks. A home’s ability to remain cool during the summer depends on countless variables present in the building structure, so you need to work with a professional who understands them.
The ARC Insulation team is BPI-certified in air sealing, insulation, building envelopes, and building analysis. Unlike other contractors, we look at how your whole home performs before adding insulation. This allows us to identify specific areas where we can make improvements to resolve your comfort issues. Additionally, we test our work afterward to ensure our insulation had the effect that we said it would. By hiring certified building science professionals, you can feel confident that your Naperville area home is protected against summer heat.
