If you aren’t sure where your home might have an insulation issue during the summer months, check common problem areas first and assess their current state of insulation. Making sure they are properly insulated (and getting that fixed if they aren’t) is crucial to keeping your home cool.
The first area to check is the attic. Insulation here is extremely important; this is the first barrier your house has to the outside elements, so ensuring that it’s doing its job is critical. Even if your attic is unfinished and only used for storage, you should take the time to properly insulate it so it can keep heat away from the living spaces in the rest of the house. Pay particular attention to the floor joists as well as the access door if you have one.
After the attic, inspect your exterior walls for the right insulation. Again, because these walls face the outdoors, they are more susceptible to allowing heat in and cold air out. Managing this is easy with good insulation, so take care to do all of your exterior walls.
Finally, you’ll want to install insulation around ducts. When you use a central air-conditioning system, the air moves through these ducts. Keeping them insulated will ensure that the cold air won’t be lost and cut down on energy costs. If you’re looking for still another way to cut costs, insulate your indoor pipes as well.
Common Insulation Issues
Even if you make sure to insulate problem areas, there might still be issues that pop up during the warm summer months. If you notice these issues, do another inspection of the area in question to find out whether you need to repair or replace your existing insulation.
Drafts are a common summertime insulation issue and most likely indicate an issue with attic insulation. In the drafty room, close all the doors and windows and check the insulation to see where the draft is happening. Then you can decide if you need help with insulation or door/window frames.
If one of the rooms in your house is consistently much warmer than other rooms, this could also indicate an insulation problem. To see if this is an insulation issue, compare the room to others on the same floor by closing all windows and doors and checking the temperature in an hour. If it’s much hotter than the other rooms, you may need to redo the insulation.