How to Determine If Your Home Needs More Insulation

One of the most discussed home improvement tasks always seems to center around overall efficiency of a home. There are many ways to make your home more efficient, but perhaps no one project will improve your home's efficiency more than insulation.

Insulation acts as a barrier between the outside air and the conditioned air within your home. Insulation keeps cold air out in the winter and traps warm air within. In the summer, insulation keeps warm air out and locks the cool air in.

With government incentives that cover a portion of the money spent on "green" home improvement projects including insulation, nearly every homeowner has considered or is currently considering upgrading their insulation. How do you know if you should consider installing more insulation in your home?

This question has been asked numerous times and the common answer is that virtually every home needs more insulation. However, this answer is not always accurate. Sometimes a home is sufficiently insulated to begin with and those telling you that you need additional insulation are likely stating that simply because the common belief is that every home could use more insulation and more is always better.

To determine if your home needs more insulation in your attic, you will need to conduct some measurements within your home and compare this to current standards for insulating a home.

To begin, grab a tape measure and locate your attic access area. Use a ladder or step stool to get into the attic. Once in the attic, measure the current depth of your attic insulation and takes note of the type of insulation found in your attic. Is it fiberglass batts, blown in insulation, or another type. Each type of insulation has its own r-value which determines its insulating factor.

Now that you have the depth measurement and have determined the type of insulation, you can easily determine the current r-value of the insulation in your attic. If it is fiberglass, take your depth measurement and multiply that by 3.14 . If it is blown in insulation, take your depth measurement and multiply that by 3.7 . For example, if the depth of your current fiberglass insulation is 8 inches multiplied by 3.14, your total r-value is 25.12.

Most home in the U.S. require an attic insulation r-value of 49. Therefore, the example home would not be sufficiently insulated. By installing an additional 8 inches of fiberglass batt insulation, the example home would exceed current insulation requirements.

Using the calculations above and measurements taken, you can easily determine if your home needs additional insulation. It's a failsafe method to determine the needs of your home and to save you money by not purchasing something that is unneeded. So take a few minutes and measure and calculate the r value of your home before upgrading the insulation, it may not need it and you could be throwing money away.