Reducing Heat from Ceilings with Insulation Batts

Choosing the right insulation is important. Ceiling insulation batts provide a cost-effective thermal and acoustic barrier for energy-efficient construction. The consistent quality, low dust, and clean-cutting resilient fibers make fabrication easy and installation fast. Ceiling insulation batts can be used in timber and metal frame applications in residential structures. These applications include thermal and acoustic treatments to walls, ceilings and floors. Ceiling insulation batts can be installed when you’re building a new home, during renovations or to an existing home at a later date as long as there is access to the ceiling space. You can lose up to 35-40 percent of the heat in your home through the ceilings in winter and around the same amount of heat can enter in through the ceilings during summer.  Ceiling insulation batts have numerous advantages. because it is one of the least expensive ways to insulate your home and professionals can install the product quickly. When compared to other types of insulation, the fiberglass version generally has the lowest installed price. Ceiling insulation batts are very flexible, which means that it can be installed between studs, rafters and joists blocks without leaving any gaps. The snug fit will help stop airflow and the transfer of heat. When installed correctly, it is very energy efficient. Studies have shown batt insulation can reduce the amount of energy required to heat and cool a home by as much as 50 percent. Along with lower energy bills, your home will be more comfortable year round. Attic ventilation serves a number of purposes too. It reduces summer heat buildup, prolonging the life of roofing and reduces air conditioner loads. After air sealing, attic ventilation is your second line of defense against the water vapor that may have found its way into the attic. It ensures a colder, well-vented attic space less likely to have formation of ice dams at the eaves. Make sure that existing attic vents are working properly and not blocked by insulation, debris or other materials. Common materials for use in accessible attics are batt or blanket types or loose-fill insulation. If there are obstructions above the joists, such as with a truss roof, it may be easiest to put batt insulation into the joist spaces and then use loose-fill insulation to create a complete blanket of insulation above the joists and around all obstructions. Loose-fill insulation is also good by itself, especially in irregular or obstructed spaces.

With almost 40 percent of your energy bill coming directly from heating and cooling your home, it’s worthwhile to consider how to insulate your home best. Insulation is now considered essential to keeping inside temperatures comfortable all year round and making your home more energy efficient. Most types of insulation batts are easy to install yourself if you follow the manufacturer's installation instructions. But if you have doubts, then hire a professional to do so. Generally, if installed properly you will only have to install it once in your home, during construction or when you’re renovating.

Understanding How to Sound Travels And Deflect Noise

Understanding how sound waves travel through air and solid materials is the key to deflect it. However, many struggle with soundproofing is because we confuse sound with light. Although both are kinds of energy that travel in wave form, light waves have much shorter wavelengths than sounds and are far easier to block out: it's much simpler to make your house pitch black than completely quiet. Unlike light waves, long-wavelength sounds can bend round corners and wriggle through the tiniest cracks and openings. Keep in mind that, while light waves pass through only a handful of solid materials such as transparent plastic and glass, sound energy will easily pass through most solids and result almost as loud the other side.

Sound travels in 2 ways:

• Through the air

Sound traveling through the air is easy to understand.  Any holes you have in the room are sound leaks such as from outlets, switches, can lights, gaps under doors, HVAC ducting and other factors are all sound transmission paths.

• Through the structure

Sound vibrates your walls, your ceiling, your floor, your tin ducting and more. Are all of those things are connected to other parts of the building.  When they are caused to vibrate by the sound in your room, the other side or what they’re connected to also vibrate and recreate that sound in other parts of the building.

Putting sound proof insulation is important for many of reasons and one of the most commonly reason is to stop sound from bothering other people in the house or other people outside the room. A more important reason to put sound proof insulation is to stop sound from penetrating into the room. Soundproofing a wall involves employing one or more strategies commonly used by home builders. The first is to decouple the drywall from the studs so that the sound doesn't pass through the wood. The second is to provide some kind of sound-absorbing material inside the wall or behind the drywall. The third is to add mass to the wall so it doesn't vibrate as easily. Lastly is to add some material on the surface that dampens the sound waves. Doing these strategies requires specialized building materials including flexible sealant and metal channel. Home builders use conventional fiberglass batt insulation for this purpose, as long as the drywall hasn't been hung yet. Another option is to blow cellulose or fiberglass loose-fill insulation into the wall through access holes. While insulation prevents reverberating and absorbs sound, it must be combined with other soundproofing methods to get the most benefit from using it. Sound proof insulation materials that are designed to block sound from entering or leaving a space are almost always found inside the wall construction. Sometimes a sound proof insulation can be heavy, dense, cumbersome or designed to decouple the wall so that one side of the wall doesn’t have hard surface contact.