Energy Audits - Reveal Suprises With Insulation and Air Conditioning or Heating Leaks

There are an almost endless variety of methods for saving money on monthly utility bills. For most home owners it means retrofitting an existing house or stop using electricity and water. While the latter two options are not a good or realistic solution, increasing the energy efficiency of the home is the best choice. There are several ways to do this from do-it-yourself projects to hiring a professional contractor or remodeler to complete the necessary renovations.

Some of the most basic maintenance and improvements pertain to one of the most common and problematic areas of a home's energy loss. Leaky gaskets and trim around doors and windows allow heat to penetrate into the home during summer time and escape during the winter months. Replacing door gaskets and improving the insulation around windows can generally be considered to be a straight forward task that many home owners should be able to accomplish.

Attending to the doors and windows however, will only address part of the problem of heat loss. The insulation in older homes can often be superior compared to newer residential construction. Many times it is not. An inexpensive and eye opening solution to determining the weak spots in the home's thermal envelope is to have a home energy audit take place.

Energy audits will reveal poorly insulated parts of the walls, ceilings and door and window frames. One weakness almost every home owner can expect to see is along the ceiling where there are built-in light fixtures or where walls meet the ceiling. Houses which have crawl spaces underneath the living quarters will also likely have poorly insulated areas.

Until relatively recently, the only way to correct these problems was to climb into the attic or underneath the home and add additional amounts of insulation. Adding insulation to walls, however, often proves to be messy, time consuming and expensive due to difficulties and labor costs. There have not been any acceptable alternatives until now.

One major development which has received nationwide attention and is becoming an increasingly popular method for improving energy efficiency is radiant barriers. Radiant barriers can be laid throughout an entire attic space from exterior wall to exterior wall. Unlike every other type of common insulation, rather than impeding the heat from penetrating through into the living quarters, radiant barriers actually reflect the heat of summer away from the ceiling and back out through the attic. The major benefit to adding a radiant barrier is that it is a non-invasive method for installing insulation or buttressing up existing insulation, unlike creating holes in the walls for installing blown loose fill insulation and then patching the holes. Radiant barriers will simply span the entire structure.

Different methods or techniques exist for applying radiant barriers. There are also different types of radiant barriers. Some are perforated, solid or double-sided. Which type will work best in an application will be determined by each specific situation and construction. A professional installer should be able to explain how and why one type and method is better than another.

For additional information on the topic of improving insulation using radiant barriers visit Utility Improvements. Article independently authored by Daniel P. Elliott. The content herein may or may not reflect the views and opinions of Utility Improvements. Click for search engine optimization and search engine marketing or visit WebDrafter.com's Blog.