Maximizing the insulation companies in dallas texas for your green home is the most important step you can take towards reducing the heating and cooling energy requirements of your home. Many options are available to you, such as fiberglass batt, rigid or blown-in insulation. Let’s look at cellulose blown-in insulation, which, in my opinion, is one of the greenest options available today.
Cellulose blown-in insulation is made of post-consumer, recycled paper, most often newspapers. With the new blowers available today, the insulation can be blown in and compacted to a high density. This will eliminate the settling of the insulation, which is what has happened with blown-in insulation applied 10 or so years ago.
By the way, did you know that fiberglass batt insulation also settles, especially if it was not installed properly, which sadly happens very often?
Blown-in insulation is the best option to make sure that the insulation is applied tightly and continuously around electrical outlets, piping, wiring and ductwork. It can reduce air leaks considerably, compared to having batt insulation installed. All those special boxes you can buy to prevent air leaks around electrical outlets have been developed to fix improperly installed batt insulation.
Doing it right in the first place is better, cheaper and saves you headaches and money in the future. A tight, high R-value insulation will also increase the comfort of your green home, and will minimize the required energy use for heating and cooling. A solar heating system can be sized smaller and will therefore also be more affordable.
Most providers of cellulose blown-in insulation operate within a limited geographical area, because the transportation of the insulation beyond a certain range is not feasible, due to the high ratio of volume/pound of the insulation. This means that you would be fulfilling another critical green component: buy local!
Besides insulating all exterior walls with blown-in insulation, you can also apply it in the garage ceiling and the attic floor.
Those living in the cold climates are familiar with the dangers of having ice-dams form. The dams form when the attic insulation has gaps and leaks. The heat from the rooms below will escape upwards and melt the snow on the roof. It then freezes again and an ice dam forms. More snow is melted, ice builds up and thaws again. The ice dam grows. The water from the melting ice cannot run down on the roof, because it is blocked by the ice dam. The path of least resistance is through the roof and into your home.
It takes skilled contractors to install batt insulation correctly at the edges where walls, attic and roof framing meet. Often the contractors do not take the time, or don’t know how, to prevent gaps and leaks in the batt insulation they apply. Blown-in insulation will reach those nooks and crannies and fill them up with insulation, thereby preventing heat from escaping and ice dams from forming.
