New Orleans - the Value of R Value: Insulating Your Homes

Having a comfortable home is necessary. After all, this is the place where restoration of the energy lost during work should take place. And one of the most helpful ways to ensure that the home will really be a comfortable place to live in is properly insulating it. How insulation works and where the R Value comes in will be explained in the succeeding paragraphs.

Under normal circumstances, heat transfers from warmer place to a cooler one. Consider one winter day as an example. Since the temperatures will really be freezing during this time, you will really have to start a fire and the heating inside your home should be in full blast. But because of how nature works, all this will just be put to waste since heat will just travel from your home where it is warm to the outside where it is really cold. Hence, there is a need to insulate your home.

Insulation works by countering the directions of the heat flow. So, when it is winter, insulation inside your home should counter the flow of heat from the inside to the outside so that you will still be comfortable. When it is summer time, the insulation should work to counter the flow of heat from the very hot outside to the relatively cooler inside of your home. Now, how will you determine that the insulator that you are using is actually a good insulator?

You just have to look at the material’s R Value. This value in technical terms represents the material’s resistance to the heat flow. Logically, the higher the material’s R Value, the higher is its insulating powers. Some of the materials that could pass as good insulators are Polyurethane, polystyrene, and perlite which all have an R Value of at least 2.5 per square inch.

Now that you know what materials are of good R Value, the questions would be where these materials should be placed around your home to get the best out of them. Oftentimes, people miss out on this because of its apparent remoteness from where the actual household activities take place. Another good place would be on exterior walls. This may seem logical since this part of the house is the one which has direct contact with the outside environment.

Foundations could also be a good place insulate. Most house designs have these on places of that surround the whole perimeter and they are also of equal intervals from each other. From this, insulation can really be considered to be of relatively complete coverage of the living spaces. So, it is important that the materials of the highest R Values should be put on them.