Insulation in St. Louis. It is conventional wisdom that a house in St. Louis must have an adequate amount of insulation to be energy efficient and comfortable. However, not many St. Louis homeowners understand why, or the full scope of how effective proper insulation can be!
If you are going to keep your St. Louis area home as comfortable as possible throughout all four seasons, adding the right insulation materials in the right places will go a long way toward reducing your energy bills, your indoor drafts, and the strain on your heating and cooling system. Here’s how.
The insulation throughout your St. Louis home should slow down the transfer of heat between your indoor living space and the unpredictable outdoors. This works in two ways, by slowing and preventing heat from infiltrating, but also slowing and preventing heat from escaping. Because insulation is a two-way buffer, it keeps a St. Louis home cooler in the summer, and warmer in the winter!
St. Louis homes with the right amount of insulation, properly installed in the correct areas, can see many benefits throughout the year, including:
You may be wondering, where can this heat enter (or exit) my St. Louis home? The most common places where insulation is needed are the attic, the crawlspace or basement, exterior walls, and in some cases, the garage. Insulating these areas creates a thermal boundary around your St. Louis home, giving your heating and cooling equipment more control over the indoor temperatures.
How Insulation Boosts Your Home’s Energy Efficiency
The most recognizable type of insulation used in St. Louis is the fluffy pink stuff you may have seen while venturing up into the attic to grab your Christmas decorations. This is fiberglass batt insulation, and is very common among homes in the greater St. Louis area. But there are actually a variety of insulation types, and they each come with their own benefits.
At SmartHouse, we work with St. Louis homeowners to choose the right insulation materials that best suit the needs of their individual homes, which can include:
Spray foam insulation is used in strategic areas where cellulose and fiberglass insulation is less effective, like along the rim joists.
Insulation may slow the heat transfer between the building materials that make up your home in St. Louis, but if there are any leaks throughout your home, that heat will find it! At SmartHouse, we almost always recommend air sealing your home in addition to insulation upgrades.
We’re talking here about big leaks. While the small cracks around windows and doors are intuitively troublesome, far more worrying are the massive leaks of air through structural components such as plumbing and flue chases, recessed lights, electrical penetrations, whole house fans and attic hatches. These ‘big’ leaks are hard for most St. Louis homeowners to diagnose and fix, and can be up to 20 times more wasteful than all of the minor and obvious leaks throughout a house.
If you suspect the insulation in your St. Louis home may be insufficient, damaged, or just not doing the trick, our BPI Certified Home Performance specialists will meet with you to discuss your insulation options. We will assess your current insulation needs and pair your St. Louis home with the right attic insulation, wall and ceiling insulation, or garage insulation to keep your home comfortable all year round.
As the premier provider of healing, cooling and home performance services in the Greater St. Louis area, our friendly and experienced team knows exactly what it takes to keep your home comfortable and your bills low. SmartHouse offers an extensive array of heating, cooling, diagnostic and improvement services for both existing homes and new construction, including the following:
