In a year, you have four seasons:
- Spring
- Summer
- Autumn
- Winter
However, those four seasons there are different weather generalities:
- Sunny
- Clouded
- Raining
- Windy
- Cold
Of course, each one of those has a “partiality”
- Partially sunny
- Semi clouded
- Isolated showers
- Partially windy
- Partially cold
Yet, despite it all, humans perceive two temperatures:
- Cold
- Hot
It might be hot and rainy or raining and cold. But the two temperatures remain steady. During the days where the temperature is hot, most of us seek to have cool and comfortable homes where we retreat from the exhausting heat from the outside world.
Conversely, it is during the cold days of the year that we seek to have a warm and cozy home where to retreat and spend those lazy and relaxing moments with our loved ones that make up the sweetest parts of life.
In order to achieve this, we buy and install systems that will either heat up or cool down our homes. However, it is not that easy, nor it is that simple as the heat and the cool temperature inside our homes can easily escape to the outside through weak points in the structure:
- Windows
- Doors
- Chimney Flue
- Walls
- Ceiling
Windows
Windows are an important escape problem for heat and coolness from our homes because of the temperature transmission properties of glass itself. Besides this, most of us have single players of glass in our windows, and the thickness of this glass itself is quite commercial.
Doors
It is rare to see any house with thick, heavy doors. Most doors have commercial-style thickness and sturdiness. As a result, they do let the heat and cool feeling escape much like the windows, though not as fluidly.
Chimney Flue
Most of us don’t have a flue plug in our chimneys. First, because it would be extremely hard to put in a fireplace as they have to be inserted and balanced and secondly because a flue plug can become quite messy and that implies more cleaning and whatnot.
Chimney flues are a terrible source of chilly winds and indoor weather escaping when they are improperly cared for. However, there is a way to counterbalance this problem, so that you can get a chimney flue plug if you so wish to, but not as a main necessity.
Walls
These comprise the biggest area in the house that lets the warmth escape. During the hot days of the year, these are the primary sources for the air conditioning to be inefficient. Walls are exposed to the outdoor weather and the rays of the sun.
Walls are stones that are aligned properly and set along a straight line glued together with some sort of adhesive (in this case, concrete). As such, they are prone to store heat and release it at night. While this could be a positive side during the cold days of the year, it has to be mentioned that the amount of heat that they can store will depend on the strength of the sunlight they receive.
The heat the stones absorb as they get sunlight will be released once sunlight ceases to shine upon them. This could be because the sky has become clouded or because night has fallen.
In either case, during the hot days of the year, this means that the air conditioning system you have in place will not work properly. During the coldest days of the year, the process reverses, and the stones that conform to the room’s wall will transfer the heat from the inside to the outside where it is released.
Ceiling
The same thing happens to the ceiling of the house. It will absorb the heat from sun rays while the sun is right over the house and release the heat when the sun does not shine over the roof anymore.
However, the ceilings have a unique failure. Hot air rises while cold air sinks to the ground. This means that during the cold, cold days of the year, the ceiling will absorb the heat from the inside and release it with far more speed than the walls do even if the surface of the walls is greater than the surface of the ceiling.
How to prevent these leaks
Indoor weather leakage can be prevented through the use and installation of insulation materials in the walls and ceiling. Insulation is made from a wide variety of materials and comes in different presentations, there is one that suits your needs and desires.
In order to properly prevent heating leaks from your house to the outside as well as avoid cool weather escaping from your comfortable home, you need to place insulation with the proper R-value.
R-value is the Thermal resistance of any given material to the conduction of heat. For example, a low R-value will result in low resistance to heat conduction. This translates, -in amateur terms, to allow the heat to escape more easily from the insulated area. As such, if you have indoor cool weather, it will be far easier for insulation with a low R-value to permit the hot air from the outdoor to sift indoor.
Conversely, an improper R-value during winter will allow the heat from indoors to escape outdoors, causing your energy bill to rise or -at the very least, not to reduce itself. This is, in many cases, the main reason for homeowners and house residents to dismiss insulation as an important tool to reduce energy expenses and heat costs.
Just by installing insulation in their homes, homeowners and house residents can experience a significant and easily noticeable change in the indoor weather. Even if the R-value is the wrong one or the insulation material is not adequate, there will be a noticeable change. But having a “just noticeable” change is not enough when you can achieve more with the same amount of investment
Reducing your energy and heating or cooling costs is one of the most important advantages homeowners or house residents will experience just by installing insulation in their homes. However, this reduction will increase and become more evident when the selected insulation material and the R-value chosen is the adequate one.
The adequate R-value for your project will depend on what the project is, where are you located in the United States territory and the general climate that you experience throughout the year. For instance, there is no point in using high R-values in areas where there is never snow falling and the general weather is tropical.
At the same time, if the area where you reside is in a mountainous area or snow-like or cold weather is a constant throughout the year, low R-values are not advisable. Yet, R-values are very flexible and you can install one R-value on top of another R-value to compensate.