How to Check Your Insulation This Winter

Winter is upon us, which means, to stay warm, you’ll need to run your furnace quite a bit. Remaining comfortable can take a toll on your heating bill, but there are ways to maximize your furnace’s efficiency. One such way is proper insulation. It slows the flow of heat, keeping it from escaping your house, thus keeping you warmer, longer, without using as much energy.

But do you have enough to protect your home? Here’s how to check your insulation in preparation for the coming heating season.

Checking Your Attic Insulation

You can do a simple eye check to make sure you have enough insulation in your attic. If there’s enough there to cover your floor joists, then you probably have sufficient insulation. If not, you should add more.

If you want to measure more accurately, get a tape measurer to read the depth. This will help you calculate the R-value. For loose, fiberglass insulation, the R-value is the depth in inches times 2.5. For fiberglass batts, it’s the depth times 3.2. If you have rock wool, multiply by 2.8, vermiculite or perlite granules, by 2.7, and cellulose fibers, by 3.7.

In Ohio, it’s recommended that your insulation have an R-value of between R38 and R49. If your home is completely uninsulated, then raise that to R49 to R60. If you want to insulate your basement or a crawlspace, it should be between R25 and R30.

Check Your Insulation in the Walls

Seeing if your walls are insulated is more difficult than other places, since you can’t just go in and look. There are specialized tools to help, such as borescopes and infrared cameras, but these are expensive. Instead, remove the plate from a light switch. Turn off the power to that circuit and use a long, non-conductive hook to reach between the junction box and the plaster and see if you’re able to pull out any insulation. If not, then there probably is none.

To learn more about how to check your insulation, contact us at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning. We proudly serve the Lorain area’s HVAC needs.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about home comfort and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 440-201-2959.