If you’re looking for a way to drastically cut your energy costs, consider insulating your attic loft. Most people don’t realize the significant amount of heat that’s lost through an un-insulated attic – this number can be as high as 30% of your heating bill.

Think about that. If your bill is $180 per month in the winter, you’re literally throwing away $54 each month. Over the course of a year, you will be out almost $650. For most of us, $650 is nothing to sneeze at. By installing new insulation in your attic, you could effectively save three and half months’ worth of utility bills.

Imagine not paying your utility bill for three and a half months! If this sounds good to you, you’ll be happy to know that the process of installing new insulation is quite easy. In fact, you can do it yourself without hiring a contractor. All you have to invest is a little bit of research time, your upfront yearly energy savings and a weekend of easy labor. Yes, the upfront cost can be a little off-putting, but the good news is that this is a cost that’s also deductible on your yearly taxes. It’s a win-win!

Now that you’ve made the decision, you must think about what material you will use to insulate your space. Most people choose to use fiberglass or cellulose in their attic. Either is an acceptable choice, as it will accomplish the goal of keeping heat inside your home. However, you might also consider reflective foil, or radiant barrier as it is sometimes called. Radiant barrier is used in conjunction with regular insulation to keep unwanted air out and heated and cooled air inside.

Once the job is complete, you will begin enjoying savings immediately. Within a short period of time, you will have made up the cost of installing the insulation and everything from there will be money in your pocket.

Okay, so I may be a little dramatic.  But it sure is cold in this building.  I understand the floor surface needs to stay cold to keep the ice intact, but surely someone could engineer a system which allowed people in the stands to be a little more comfortable.  We just installed radiant barrier insulation in our home attic and from what I’ve learned about the product, it could do wonders inside this corrugated metal building.

See, radiant barrier is a product engineered from highly reflective aluminum, 99% pure.  Unlike aluminum kitchen foil (which tears easily), radiant barrier contains an inner layer of polyester woven to form a scrim.  The inner layer makes the material easy to handle and helps give it body when installed.

In traditional attics, there are two places to install radiant barrier insulation.  One is over existing mass insulation and the other is along the rafters.  Both serve to block out radiant heat from passing into cooler air spaces.  In the floor application, it keeps the warm air from your HVAC system inside the living spaces of your home (as in winter).  When used on the rafters, it keeps radiant heat from the sun from entering your home during the winter, a process which effectively increases the efficiency of your air conditioning unit.  Both applications save you money in energy bills.

I think if this ice arena had radiant barrier insulation sandwiched between the inner and outer metal wall panels, it would be a lot more comfortable for fans.

We all use our garages for storage, hobbies, woodworking, car repair and whole a lot more. It would be nice to be able to take advantage of this extension of your house all year long but if you live in a cold winter state, it’s usually not practical. It’s way too cold for comfort.  However, there is an easy fix which most people don’t even realize: garage insulation like radiant barrier.

I recently began exercising again after a long lapse, a few years. I have found the garage to be the perfect location to do my running in place and jumping around. No, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing area but since I exercise at 6 am, I am more concerned about finding a spot where I wouldn’t have to worry about making noise and waking anyone in the house. For me, it was ideal temperature-wise: cool in the fall and in the summer, I could open the doors if it was too hot. But, now it is winter and way too cold to do anything out there.  I don’t want my physical fitness to suffer, and I need an alternative to freezing!

After a little online research and following some talks with our contractor, I found that our garage walls are already insulated although there are no heat or cooling ducts in the area. But the doors were not insulated. That turned out to be our biggest source of cold air coming in (and the ruination of my exercise area). Thankfully, this was an easy fix. Installing the door insulation is a beginner do-it-yourself project. You can purchase the materials separately or in a kit. Basically, all you need to do is cut the pieces provided to fit your particular door and then glue it or staple it in place. It couldn’t be much easier!

Besides restoring my exercise area, this improved garage insulation has allowed me to complete some woodworking projects (instead of taking the whole winter off) and made getting down Christmas decorations a lot more pleasant. No more excuses for keeping Santa up until April!  We hope to see some improvements in our energy costs but even without that it was worth the additional insulation project to be able to use this space more comfortably all year long.  It also has provided a bit more usable living space as well.

There are lots of commonly known ways to help combat home heating costs.  One is caulking windows and doors to block incoming air drafts.  Sometimes, total window replacement is necessary in order to get a good fit and a tight seal.  Another tactic to try is using foam insulation to fill cracks and spaces behind electrical outlets and wall switches.  Remember, little things add up!

If you’re heard of radiant barrier, then you know it’s a great product that can be used in conjunction with existing traditional insulation in your attic.  The radiant barrier blocks the flow of radiant heat generated by your furnace to create a cozy environment in your living spaces.  Once that heat begins to rise, it meets the radiant barrier in your attic and is deflected down to the living space.  You’ll be able to set the temperature lower and remain as comfortable as before.

The same type of technology works perfectly in your garage.  Garage insulation is used on garage doors and the surrounding joints to block the flow of warmer air, effectively keeping it inside where you want it.

Garage insulation also has some side benefits of greater privacy, and possibly even some noise abatement (perfect if you have a “garage band” family member).  For households where the garage is insulated, this product is especially important as it helps ease the burden on your HVAC system.  On cold mornings, especially, you can reduce the risk of your vehicle not starting due to low temps because the garage insulation will have maintained a consistent temperature overnight, despite drops outside.

We were confused.  There’s been a good amount of discussion lately about alternative insulation methods and conserving energy.  After all the hype and conflicting stories, I think we finally figured things out.

Radiant barrier is another name for attic insulation, a product that should be installed in your attic.  The purpose of the product is to block the flow of radiant heat from one place to another.  Namely, from your cozy warm home up through your attic into the big open outdoors.  Paying attention now?

Every day, each minute of the winter months, you’re losing expensive air up through your attic.  Do you know how easy it is to stop?  Do you know how easy it is to save some money for as long as you own your home by simply investing now in a little radiant barrier attic insulation?

When the heated air from your living room (for example) rises, it meets your regular mass insulation.  That stuff slows it down a little, until the insulation absorbs all it can hold.  Then the heated air just keeps rising and heads on out of your attic.  Have you ever noticed how, after a hard snow, some homeowners roofs are pretty clean of snow?  That’s because the roof is so warm from all that escaping heated air that the snow melts quickly.  That’s bad.

When you lay the radiant barrier type of attic insulation – made from 99% aluminum sandwiched over a thin, flexible, polyester woven scrim – down over the rafters in your roof, it effectively acts like a barrier to rising radiant heat, forcing it back into the living space below.  It’s lightweight, flexible, and easy to install.  All you need is a box cutter knife.

The result of using radiant barrier is a warm home, more consistent thermostat setting, and money saved.

The whole purpose of your HVAC system is to allow you to control your indoor temperature despite what the thermometer may say on your patio. Since heat will naturally seek out a cooler place to roam, the proper use of radiant barrier throughout your home can ensure that you get the most out of your heating and cooling system.

In the winter months, when the temperature drops, your goal is to keep heat that has been generated by your heating system or solar heat that may come through your windows trapped in the interior spaces of the home. In the summer months, as the mercury climbs, your goal is to keep heat generated from the sun outside. Optimally, that heat is blocked before ever entering your home.

Radiant barrier is the insulating product that many homeowners are turning to in order to achieve both goals. As a result, many are finding that the life of their heating and cooling systems are extended since they don’t have to work as hard, run as long, or turn on and off as often as before they made the decision to switch to the more effective radiant barrier.

When you are able to effectively direct the radiant heat that is generated through your equipment or by the sun, it puts you in control of where you want that heat to go. For example, a radiant barrier that is stapled to the rafters in the attic has the ability to reflect up to 97% of the sun’s heat back outside. This means that your attic space will be cooler along with the rest of the home.

Conversely, in the winter months, a radiant barrier placed in interior walls or the floor of your attic will direct the existing heat from your interior spaces, most likely generated from your heating unit, back into your living areas rather than escaping to the outside. This keeps the heat right where it will do the most good. After all, “global warming” by heating the outdoors with your heating unit is not your intention, right?

In every climate, the ability to control heat flow through the use of radiant barrier insulation methods is key to controlling the climate inside your home, even though we cannot control the climate outside. With the rising costs of utilities and the concerns over energy and the environment, radiant barrier is becoming the insulation of choice for many homeowners.

The Midwest is known for our corn and our pork.  We’re known for good public school systems and for those bridges in that Madison County movie.  But we’re also known to have some pretty darn cold winters.  And that’s a fact.

As a native of Florida, I detest the cold weather.  Over a decade of living in Iowa hasn’t thickened my blood or made me less susceptible to being discomfited by the frigid temperatures and biting wind.  I stay indoors as much as possible and avoid stepping outside, even into our garage, as much as possible.  That can make for a long five months of a season, for sure.

One thing that’s made Old Man Winter more tolerable has been the insulation project we finished late last summer.  Tired of astronomical cooling bills, we scheduled a home energy audit with our utility company.  He told us that all those faint drafts and cool rooms added up to some significant air transfer, and that’s not a good thing.

He determined we had some decent basic insulation in our attic, but that we certainly had room to add more.  He also suggested we look into a relatively new product (but evidently one that’s getting a lot of press) called reflective insulation.  The product looks a lot like tin foil, the stuff you might use in the kitchen.  But the foil insulation effectively stops heated air from moving into spaces where there’s colder air.  That was a perfect solution for our house, where the warm air we were paying for seemed to keep rising into the attic and out into the atmosphere.

Heat lamps and ceramic heaters can get costly, and a great deal of the heat produced is lost in the open spaces of barns and stalls.  Many types of animals habitually group together out of either a communal instinct or a primal need to share body heat.  Radiant barrier plays into those needs.

Unlike heat lamps or heaters which produce external sources of heat, radiant barrier serves as a way to contain heat by blocking its ability to pass to cooler spaces.  For example, if radiant barrier were to line a stall where three goats slept at night, the radiant barrier would effectively contain the body heat those goats generated, preventing much of its loss to the elements.  If the stall were to have a top as well as a slightly raised floor, heat conservation would increase still further.

Radiant barrier is made of 99% aluminum baked over a woven polyester scrim.  The scrim makes the product durable and easy to handle, while the aluminum provides a highly reflective surface.

Place radiant barrier along the inside of that chicken coop you’re building, along all four sides, top and bottom.  Use it to line dog houses as well.

In some cases you may want to cover the barrier with chicken wire or random 1×1 strips of wood in the  event your animal likes to chew.

Being a thrifty and practical kind of person, I’ve found ways to duct tape some of them back together.  I’ve used heavy coats of wax to make the bottoms more slick.  I even went so far as to use a light piece of board and some screws to hold a couple of pieces which wanted to split together, just to eek a little more life out of the sled.

Inspiration came one day when I heard about my youngest using the wax paper from his sandwich to grease his way down the slide at the playground.  My mind immediately turned to the reflective insulation I’d used to make our home more efficient by reducing the loss and gain of radiant heat through the attic.  Turns out I still had some scraps of the reflective insulation in the garage, so I began cutting strips off for each of the kids to use.

A few weeks later, we got another good snowfall.  It was time to test our theory that reflective insulation was so smooth and slick that it would make the best sled around.  With a good sprint and a leap, my kids went sailing down the hill on their reflective insulation sled.  Fun times!  And a good way to make good use from leftover material.

Also called foil insulation or reflective foil, or even reflective insulation, this product is comprised of a woven polyester scrim surrounded by 99% aluminum coating.  While easily cut with scissors or box cutters, it’s virtually impossible to tear – a characteristic which makes it easy to handle.  Sold by the roll in several lengths, radiant barrier works in conjunction with existing insulation to block the flow of radiant heat from one area into another.  While it may resemble aluminum foil, it’s definitely not a cooking product.

Radiant barrier should be installed in your attic when temps are mildest in your area.  Not only does that help ensure that you don’t get overheated or that your fingers are warm enough to work properly, it means you’ll be getting the project done before the worst of the season arrives.  In that way, radiant barrier can start saving you money immediately.

While it’s not critical to have another set of hands helping during the installation process, things can go more smoothly when someone else can unroll and cut the product, leaving you to staple and smooth along the rafters.  It will also make the installation process move a little more quickly, a definite perk to any DIY project.  Estimate one weekend afternoon to get the project completed.

If you’re interested in understanding just how well the product works, be sure to keep copies of your energy bills and make year-over-year comparisons of pre-installation and post-installation.  Make note of any significant changes like the addition of another refrigerator or freezer, anything that might counterbalance a reduction in energy consumption provided by the radiant barrier.