Insulation is a key component of any home, helping to regulate temperature and keep your living space comfortable. However, insulation can also have another benefit – reducing noise. In this blog post, we will explore how insulation can help reduce noise and enhance your home’s acoustic environment.
How Insulation Reduces Noise?
Insulation can reduce noise by absorbing sound waves. Sound waves are vibrations that travel through the air and are absorbed by dense materials. Insulation is designed to absorb these sound waves, which can help reduce the amount of noise that enters or leaves your home.
There are two types of noise that insulation can reduce: airborne noise, and impact noise. Airborne noise is sound that travels through the air, such as conversations or music. Impact noise is sound that’s created by impact or vibrations, such as footsteps or a slamming door.
By absorbing these sound waves, insulation can help reduce noise transmission between rooms or from outside. This can make your home a more peaceful and pleasant environment.
What Type of Insulation Works Best?
While all insulation can help reduce noise to some extent, there are certain types of insulation that are specifically designed for soundproofing. Two of the most common types of insulation used for soundproofing are fiberglass and cellulose.
Fiberglass insulation is made of fine glass fibers that are woven together to form a blanket-like material. This type of insulation is affordable and easy to install, making it a popular choice for soundproofing. It’s also effective at reducing airborne noise, making it ideal for rooms where music or conversation is often present.
Cellulose insulation is made of recycled paper or wood fibers. It’s a more eco-friendly option than fiberglass, and it’s also effective at reducing airborne noise. It’s denser than fiberglass, making it an excellent choice for reducing impact noise like footsteps or slamming doors.
How to Install Insulation for Soundproofing?
To install insulation for soundproofing, you’ll need to take a few additional steps beyond standard installation. The first step is to determine which type of insulation is best for your needs. Once you’ve chosen the right type of insulation, it’s time to install it.
When installing insulation for soundproofing, it’s important to fill the entire cavity of the wall or ceiling. Any gaps or spaces can allow sound waves to travel through, reducing the effectiveness of the insulation. It’s also important to seal any air leaks, which can also allow sound waves to pass through.
Another key factor to consider when installing insulation for soundproofing is the STC rating. The STC, or Sound Transmission Class, is a rating system that measures how well a material can block sound. The higher the STC rating, the more effective the material is at blocking sound. When choosing insulation, look for products with a higher STC rating, which will be the most effective at reducing noise.
Conclusion
Insulation can be an effective way to reduce noise and create a more comfortable, peaceful living environment. By absorbing sound waves and preventing them from passing through walls and ceilings, insulation can reduce both airborne and impact noises. When selecting insulation for soundproofing, it’s important to choose the right type, fill all gaps, and seal air leaks to maximize its effectiveness.
If you’re concerned about noise in your home, contact one of our professional insulation contractors to discuss insulation options that can help reduce noise and create a more comfortable living space. By working with an experienced professional, you can ensure that your home is properly insulated and designed to provide the best possible acoustic environment.
There’s more than one way to insulate a home. Insulation is available in several different materials and application types. There’s fiberglass insulation, spray foam insulation and even reflective barrier insulation, but one of the more lesser-known types is denim insulation.
Denim insulation or recycled denim insulation is just what it sounds like: home insulation made from recycled denim blue jeans. This might seem odd at first, but consider that denim is a cotton-based material that provides an efficient thermal barrier between what’s inside of it and what’s outside of it.
In this article, we’ll examine some of the pros and cons of denim insulation.
Pros
There are several reasons you may want to use recycled denim insulation in your home, and we’ll cover some of them below:
Eco-friendly: If you care about the environment, then denim insulation is the home insulation material for you. Made entirely from recycled jeans, denim insulation is a green solution that you can use to insulate your home. For manufacturing, the metal portions of the jeans are removed, and the denim is broken down to its cotton-based form. It’s then treated, bonded and heated before being made into sheets that you can buy as insulation.
Sound-muffling: Most people don’t think about sound nullification in relation to their home’s insulation, but maybe they should. If you live in a busy area or near train tracks, you’ll be happy to know that denim insulation prevents unwanted sounds from entering your home. Some estimates state that denim insulation is 30 percent more effective at reducing exterior noise than fiberglass insulation.
High R-value: An insulation’s R-value is a rating that details how well it resists conductive heat flow. Recycled denim insulation is available in a wide range of R-values (from R-5 to R-30) that are on par with or greater than other types of insulation like fiberglass.
Cons
There’s no such thing as the perfect home insulation material, and recycled denim insulation is no exception. Here are a few drawbacks that you may face if you implement denim insulation:
Difficult to cut: If you’re trying to cut and install denim insulation yourself, you’ll soon find that it’s not always easy to cut. The sheets are usually 3.5 inches thick, and the material is dense, making it harder to slice with a utility knife. They’ve begun to make denim insulation with built-in perforations à la paper towels, so be on the lookout for those.
Costlier: Because of the involved manufacturing process, recycled denim insulation will usually run at least 10 percent higher than standard insulation materials with the same R-value rating like fiberglass.
Requires a vapor barrier: Have you ever gotten rained on when you’re wearing jeans? You’ll probably recall that it took them a long time to completely dry out. Denim insulation can be susceptible to the same issue. Because of this, you’ll have to install a vapor barrier to prevent water and moisture from contacting it, and this is an extra expense that is unique to recycled denim insulation.
Call to discuss your denim insulation today
For the green homeowners who aren’t as concerned with costs, recycled denim insulation can be a viable way to insulate their home. If you’d like to discuss denim and other types of insulation, call us at Ace Insulation Inc. We have over 100 years of combined experience in the insulation industry and pride ourselves on doing quality work for a reasonable price, so call us today.
There are many reasons why you’d want your home to have a good seal to protect against the elements. A solid barrier between the interior and exterior of your home can help you save on energy costs. It can also prevent external contaminants from getting into your home.
That’s what insulation is for. There are a few different types of insulation. Spray foam insulation has become one of the more popular types. Homeowners can see that there are a bevy of pros to using spray foam insulation. Read on to learn more about the benefits of spray foam insulation.
Spray foam insulation
What is spray foam insulation? It’s a type of insulation that combines two composite materials (polyurethane and isocyanate) to create a foamy insulating substance that expands and eventually hardens. There are two types of spray foam insulation: open cell and closed cell. Open-cell spray foam insulation is the cheaper of the two, but has a lower R-value, meaning it doesn’t insulate as well as closed cell. Closed-cell spray foam insulation costs more but has a higher R-value. Now we’ll cover some of the pros of spray foam insulation.
Better seal
One of the main benefits of spray foam insulation is the superior seal that it offers. Because of the nature of the substance, you can take spray foam insulation and apply it to small cracks, and it will automatically expand outwards to seal them up. It can be used effectively in crawl spaces and holes as well. By some estimates, it is 24 times less permeable to air movement than other types of insulation, which helps your home maintain a comfortable temperature.
Saves money
An exceptional seal means that your home will expend less energy trying to maintain its desired temperature. Spray foam insulation provides a tighter seal, meaning that it can better repel hot air in the summer and cold air in the winter. One of the main causes of energy inefficiency is inadequate insulation. If your HVAC system doesn’t have to consume as much energy to heat or cool your home, that means you won’t have to pay as much in utility costs.
Eco-friendly
Since spray foam insulation can reduce your energy consumption, it is an eco-friendly insulation solution. In addition to that, it’s one of the longest-lasting insulation materials out there, so you won’t have to have professionals drive out to replace it as often and require them to burn fossil fuels in the process. Spray foam insulation is also made of an inert polymer, which eliminates a potential nutrition source for mold and bacteria, which is beneficial to your home’s air quality.
Impermeable to water
One of the benefits of spray foam insulation is that it forms an excellent barrier against moisture and water. Keeping moisture out of dark areas like your attic is key to preventing mold growth, and in the event of torrential rain or flooding incidents, your home will remain insulated and sealed tight—something that can’t always be said for other types of insulation.
Call to discuss your spray foam insulation today
Now that you understand the pros of installing spray foam insulation, call us at Ace Insulation Inc. We’ve been insulation experts for over a decade, so call us about your home’s insulation today.
Most people understand insulation in traditional terms. If you ask them about it, they probably picture the big pink rolls available at home improvement stores, or they might also be familiar with either blow-in or spray foam options. Beyond that, they might not know too much about their choices.
There are other options that can insulate your home from the outside elements and help you save on your utility bill. Reducing heat with radiant barrier insulation is one such tactic; while traditional insulation absorbs excess heat, a radiant barrier will reflect it away from its surface.
Read on for more insight into how and where radiant barriers work and why you might want to explore this option for your home or business.
What is a radiant barrier?
At their core, radiant barriers are highly-reflective materials—picture a roll of shiny material, almost like aluminum foil but thinner. In order to be considered a radiant barrier, there are very specific criteria that must be met after being established by the United States Department of Energy. They must have a reflectivity rating of 90 percent or higher and an emissivity rating of 10 percent—numbers that ensure a high degree of efficiency. There are a number of different barrier products on the market that promise varying results, but all of them work on essentially the same principles.
How do radiant barriers work?
Radiant heat is warmth that transfers without direct contact with the source—think of how the front of your body is warm but the backside is cold if you stand by a campfire. You feel the heat transferring from the source, but you’re not making direct contact with the fire.
As the sun beats down on your roof over the course of a day, eventually the roof warms to a point where it starts transferring this heat to the inside of your house. This is where radiant barriers come into play. If applied properly, they can help reflect this heat back and away from your home’s interior so that it’s not subject to this excess warming. Finally, while reducing heat with a radiant barrier is the main goal, it is not just a benefit in warm weather. Radiant barriers help increase your insulation’s overall R-value, which also pays dividends in colder temperatures.
How to install radiant barrier insulation
Installing a radiant barrier is simple enough that it’s perfectly suited for most DIY-ers. The materials are available just about anywhere online or at home improvement stores, and the only tools that you’ll probably need are a staple gun and a pair of scissors or shears. Next you need to know where radiant barriers work. They’re usually installed either directly on the underside of your roof or on top of existing insulation—either way will prove beneficial.
Installing radiant barrier insulation should not be your sole plan for insulating your attic and home. Think of it more as a first line of defense that will serve to buttress your other insulation options. Reducing heat with a radiant barrier is a great way to cool down inside spaces in hot weather, which, in turn, decreases your cooling bills.
If your home’s insulation requires some rethinking or refreshing, then it’s time to call the pros at Ace Insulation Inc. We can help you with everything from radiant barriers to fire-stop insulation materials, so call us today for assistance.
Rising energy costs and erratic weather have made the integrity of our homes and businesses more important than ever. You want to make sure that your home’s insulation is airtight and ready for whatever the outside world throws at it.
There are more products now on the market than ever before, and the choice can be overwhelming. Knowing the differences between blow-in insulation and spray foam insulation can be useful information, so read on for more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Blow-in insulation 101
Blow-in insulation, at its core, means insulation products are physically blown into wall cavities, attics and so forth by using forced-air machines to move product into both tight and large spaces.
This insulation is usually made up of material like cellulose, which is typically made from wood or plant fibers. Alternatively, it’s sometimes composed of shredded fiberglass (e.g., recycled glass), much like the big pink rolls you’ve probably seen at the store. This is a green form of insulation thanks to its reliance on recycled materials, which is appealing to a lot of our customers. Blow-in insulation can be applied either on new construction or to shore up the insulation on an existing home, a versatile attribute.
The basics of spray foam insulation
Spray foam insulation is applied in a liquid form that expands over time, eventually taking up 30 to 60 times its original volume. This is a remarkably effective way to insulate a home, as it stops all sorts of heat transfer that can be murder on your utility bill. You can also choose between open- and closed-cell spray foam, which each have their own specific pros and cons that your technician can better explain.
This degree of quality can come at a price; one of the differences between blown-in insulation and spray foam insulation is that spray foam tends to cost a bit more.
Pros and cons
Overall, when it comes to blow-in insulation vs. spray foam insulation, it’s really up to you as a homeowner, but here are some quick takeaways.
When it comes to price, blow-in insulation usually has the edge; spray foam insulation is more difficult to apply with more expensive materials. This price difference also isn’t surprising when one considers that spray foam tends to be a more efficient material, especially if you opt for closed-cell foam. The R-value of closed-cell spray foam far surpasses that of open-cell foam or blow-in insulation, which can be valuable given our volatile weather. Another thing to consider is noise reduction; blow-in insulation has been shown to dampen sound at a degree that spray foam just can’t match.
Choosing between blow-in insulation and spray foam insulation shouldn’t just come down to whichever one is cheaper. It takes careful consideration of what you value and how you hope to change your home’s makeup. A professional from our team at Ace Insulation Inc. could be your best asset to help you more fully understand the pros and cons of each type of material, so give us a call today.
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