Insulation is to Go Green for Your Home

As I’ve written about before, one of the best ways to save energy and go green in a home is to insulate your attic!  Bottom line, if you do nothing else, please be sure you have a significant amount of insulation in your attic. More heating and cooling goes through the roof in most improperly insulated homes than you’d think!

Most homes I see have improper amounts to no insulation in the attic whatsoever.  Plus, there are choices of insulation. You can either use a spray foam product, jeans, flat board (Energy Star approved), or even the traditional batting insulation.  If you do it yourself it should cost a couple of hundred dollars. Yet, it’ll save you many hundreds over the course of a couple of years. As some good installers mention, even if you have older insulation, leaks and wear and tear still let air in and out, costing both you and the environment. This is true! Heck, you may want to consider changing out old insulation as well.

But saving on energy isn’t the only reason for changing insulation. Here are some straight facts: The average household consumes 11,040 kWh per year. If we go with Energy Star’s statement that 1 kWh of electricity generates 1.55 lbs of CO2, then the average US household creates 17,112 lbs of CO2 per year through their electricity use. That’s equivalent to a little over 6.9 tons of CO2. By using the right insulation for your house R-50 reduces greenhouse gases by 1/2 a ton† per year, each year, year after year. So insulating your home has a great rate of return like lighting too.

How to Install? Do It Yourself

As I talk about in the book Do It Yourself Home Energy Audits, you really can install insulation. It’s just you’ll need to cover your body and fill the available space on the floor, walls, and roof with insulation. On the boards, you’ll want to staple the seams on the sides of the insulation to the boards. That’ll make it more likely to stay in place. Contractor If you don’t want to install find a decent contractor that won’t rip you off. They get a discount on each product they buy at the hardware store so get a great price for the service. Please realize though that depending on the size of. Your roof depends the price. So again, one easy fix to going Green is unquestionably adding insulation to your attic and walls.