When it comes to staying cool and comfortable in your Central Virginia home this summer, your attic plays a crucial role. Attics are often overlooked, but they can be a significant source of energy loss and temperature fluctuations throughout your entire home. Proper attic insulation can prevent heat transfer in and out of your home, which is essential for maintaining consistent indoor temperatures and reducing your energy bills.
At Responsible House, we use spray foam insulation for attics in Waynesboro, Lexington, Charlottesville, Staunton, Harrisonburg, and surrounding areas because it offers superior protection against heat transfer along with many other benefits.
Conditioned Attics for Optimal Home Comfort
Conditioned attics are a game changer in the building science world. Most residential structures utilize “vented attics”, which is where the insulation for the rooms below the attic is placed against the ceiling of those rooms. This often results in wildly fluctuating attic temperatures based on season.
In the summer, an attic can get to 120-130 degrees here in Central Virginia. If you are trying to cool those rooms below the attic to 72, that’s almost a 60 degree difference, which is a lot to ask of your HVAC system. In the winter, the swing can be almost as large—from 30 degrees or less on a cold winter night to 68 degrees or so in your living spaces. At Responsible House, we often see houses like this where the HVAC system cannot keep certain rooms comfortable.
A conditioned attic typically involves three important parts:
- Remove the existing insulation: This helps to clean up years of nasty, ineffective insulation and allows us to get at the parts of your house that traditional insulation ignores.
- Apply spray foam: We install spray foam insulation to the roof deck in a particular way that maximizes the building’s efficiency.
- Manage moisture: If moisture is a recurring issue in your attic, we’ll provide a reliable solution to keep it out of your home.
The resulting conditioned attic is far more stable in terms of temperature and air movement, thereby making the rooms below more comfortable. Your HVAC system won’t have to work as hard to reach desired temperatures, and you can often utilize a smaller system when the time comes for a replacement.
Understanding Spray Foam Insulation in Attics
Radiant heat is the major contributor to hot attics and hot houses in the summer. It is not uncommon for attics to reach 120 to 130 degrees in the summer, due largely to radiant heat gain. Traditional insulation like fiberglass, cellulose, and rockwool do nothing to help with radiant heat gain. Spray foam does. Also, typical insulation materials, such as fiberglass, cellulose, and rockwool allow for air movement through their respective materials, which leads to energy loss and temperature fluctuations.
Spray foam insulation, on the other hand, adheres to surfaces, expands to fill voids, and creates an air barrier – thereby creating a continuous insulation layer and enhancing the thermal and pressure envelope of your home. When installed in your attic, it provides an excellent barrier that protects your home from year-round heat transfer and provides many whole-home benefits, including:
- Improved Comfort
- Improved indoor air quality
- Lower energy bills
- And more!
How Spray Foam Insulation Keeps You Cool
In addition to the benefits listed above, spray foam is a specialized type of insulation with features that can keep your attic—and entire home—cool throughout the summer.
- Air Sealing – By minimizing air exchange and air sealing your attic, spray foam helps your home maintain a more stable temperature.
- Radiant Barrier – Spray foam insulation can act as a radiant barrier, reflecting heat away from your attic. This reduces the amount of heat that penetrates your home, keeping your attic cooler. Reflecting radiant heat is a critical aspect of building science, aimed at reducing the load on your HVAC system to maximize efficiency.
- Reduced Heat Transfer – The high R-value of spray foam significantly reduces heat transfer between the attic and the rest of your house. This means that your HVAC system doesn’t have to work as hard to keep your home cool, leading to energy savings.
Is Spray Foam Right for Your Attic?
While spray foam insulation offers numerous benefits, it’s important to consider your specific needs. The expert team at Responsible House can help you determine if spray foam insulation is the right choice for your home with a free in-home assessment. We’ll get to know your home and assess your attic’s current insulation to make reliable recommendations based on building science, not guesswork. Our team has been helping Central Virginia homeowners solve comfort and efficiency issues with our in-depth services since 1995.
