Spend Less to Heat and Cool Your Home or Business by Being R-Value Savvy
There’s more to effectively heating or cooling a home or business than having a well-designed and properly installed heating and cooling system. Without the right insulation, much of the heated and cooled air that’s generated by such systems can easily escape, which forces them to work harder. When these systems work harder, they must use more energy, and that results in more expensive energy bills. Insulation helps enormously in this regard, and one of the most crucial aspects of choosing insulation is understanding the importance of R-value.
What is R-Value?
R-value refers to the capacity of insulating material to resist heat flow. To understand this, it helps to understand heat in general. Heat travels, and that’s precisely the problem that must be solved when heating or cooling a home. In the summer, heat flows into a home; in the winter, it flows out.
Heat travels by three means: radiation, convection and conduction. R-value addresses the latter, conduction, which is the transfer of heat through a material. Put simply, the higher the R-value, the better the insulation is at preventing the transfer of heat. By using insulation with a high enough R-value, you can prevent much of the heat loss that would typically happen during the winter. Similarly, insulation with an adequate R-value largely prevents hot air from coming into a home during the summer, which helps to keep it cooler.
Seal and Insulate Your Home or Business
When most people think about insulation, they think of the attic and walls of a home, which is where most heat escapes from or gets into a home. Entry points into a home, including doors and windows, are also common sites for the loss or entrance of heat into a home throughout the year, so it is crucial to ensure that they are properly installed and sealed to minimize this risk. Weather-stripping comes very much in handy in this regard, but if you want to drastically reduce heat transfer through doors, you should consider buying doors that are enhanced with high R-value insulation.
Invest in Insulated Doors
On a cold day, stand near a door in your home or business. Whether it’s the garage door, the front door or another door, you will probably notice a detectable drop in temperature when you stand right by it. If so, it’s not insulated enough and is allowing heat to escape. This issue can be remedied by purchasing doors that are properly insulated. Now that cooler, wetter weather has arrived in the Portland area, now is the time to do so. Overhead Door offers a wide array of insulated doors for homes and businesses, including our ThermaCore residential line, which offers R-values of 9.31, 12.76 and 17.5. Learn more by visiting our website today.
