Filed under: cellulose insulation, Green Building | Tags: cellulose insulation, energy savings, insluation, Retrofit Insulation
Memorial Day. The traditional kickoff of summertime. Our thoughts fade of cold winter months–and many look forward to lower monthly energy bills. But don’t forget that buzzing you will soon hear while sitting on the porch will more often be from air conditioners than cicadas.
The CIMA website activity tends to reflect the public misconception that home insulation is primarily a protection against winter’s colder temperatures. The visitor traffic historically falls off some from late spring through the early summer months as the weather gets warmer. Since much of the nation has colder winter climates it’s natural that as the season changes the focus on energy-efficiency wanes.
This thinking is flawed for two reasons. First, the time to retrofit or increase insulation in a house is not during the colder months. Just as important is the savings that can be realized by having better insulation in the warmer summer months. A well insulated home can save the owner 25 percent or more on cooling bills.
Insulating a home is more like creating a thermos than a blanket. Most people know that they can keep hot things hotter and cold things colder for longer periods of time when they use a thermos. The same goes for insulating a house. No matter whether that house is in Maine or Miami. The benefits of insulation and a tightly sealed home pay huge dividends.
The next time you pack that cooler for a summer picnic or trip to the beach think of your house. If that cooler is high quality chances are there will still be ice frozen inside hours later (if not it’s probably time to buy a new cooler.) You can get that same insulating quality, and excellent savings on energy bills in the summer, in your home.
So think of insulation as a thermos rather than a winter blanket. With the proper insulation a house can keep on delivering energy savings all year round.
Enjoy your summer–and don’t forget that insulation retrofit project!
Dan Lea
CIMA Executive Director
Filed under: Alternative Energy, cellulose insulation, Green Building, green products | Tags: cellulose, cellulose insulation, energy savings, green products, insluation, remodeling, Retrofit Insulation
CIMA awarded the Extreme Insulation Retrofit to a Kentucky couple selected at random in April from the hundreds who visited the online sweepstakes.
(L-R: Jerry Robinson, Robinson Insulation, Russell Buckman, Cell-Pak, Bob Eipert, Bremen Energy Auditors, winners David and Susan Heath
Now, CIMA is blowing the door out of the Extreme Insulation Retrofit winner’s house. Well, to clarify, the air is being blown out the front door in a blower door test to identify air leaks in the home of David and Susan Heath as the first step toward their retrofit.
CIMA producer member David Parr and his team from Cell Pak are making ready to upgrade the 3,000+ square foot home with cellulose insulation. The first step of a proper retrofit is to determine air leaks by a professional energy auditor, says Parr. Cell Pak enlisted the support of Berman Energy Auditors to perform a “blower door” test. The process involves mounting a special high-speed fan in the frame of a main exterior door of a home. The fan pulls air out of the home lowering the air pressure inside and draws in higher pressure outside air through leaks and unsealed openings.
EnergySavers.gov website lists some important reason for establishing the proper tightness and seal of a home:
- Reducing energy consumption due to air leakage
- Avoiding moisture condensation problems
- Avoiding uncomfortable drafts caused by cold air leaking in from the outdoors
- Making sure that the home’s air quality is not too contaminated by indoor air pollution.
One of the best ways to achieve a tightly sealed home is by using cellulose insulation. It offers high R-Values and when properly installed can provide a very tight seal by filling walls and attics to a level that simply can’t be achieved with standard batt insulation. Cellulose fills all the nooks and crannies in attics, seals around HVAC vents, and completely surrounds the plumbing pipes and conduits that are behind the drywall in most house.
The CIMA team prepares the "blower door" to test winners house.
The blower door test results will help the CIMA retrofit team better identify where air leaks are occurring in the Heath’s home. The retrofit will be handled by Robinson Insulation. They will be able to better target where to add insulation to seal up the Heath’s home along with generally improving their overall insulation and R-Values.
We will continue to follow the story here at The Greenest of the Green. The Heaths have agreed to share their home energy bills to allow tracking the improvement pre and post their retrofit. This will be the prize that keeps on giving for years to come in lower monthly bills and potential increased home value. Look for more in the coming months. We also invite you to share your stories about improvements from adding cellulose insulation in your home with a comment on this blog.
Visit CIMA online any time to learn more about the benefits of cellulose insulation.
