DALLAS Blog

How Insulation Keeps You Comfortable Through the Winter

Those of us who weathered record-setting cold temperatures, ice and snow in the Dallas, Richardson, Plano and surrounding areas in February of 2021 understand how miserable and expensive a brutal winter storm can be.  In the state in which we like to brag about the weather changing every few minutes, the weather did not change for over a week, leading to massive damage, discomfort and quite a few deaths.

Why did so many homes have frozen pipes and damage? Of course, many north Texas homes were not built to withstand sub-zero temperatures for many days in a row.  But worse, because of failures of our power grid, even homes that were well insulated couldn’t hold in heat for more than a couple of days.

How does insulation play a role in your comfort?  Insulation has one purpose – to slow the transfer of energy from the comfortable inside of your home to the outside.  When you heat (or cool) your home to the desired temperature inside, the longer you can keep that energy on the inside of your home, the less your HVAC system or heaters will have to work. The current building standard in Dallas and Fort Worth calls for R-38, which equates to about 13 inches of insulation in your attic. There is not much that can be done to add insulation to walls, without tearing out the sheetrock and upgrading what is there. If you have no insulation in your walls, the process of adding insulation is called dense packing. Dense packing involves drilling 2 inch diameter holes through the sheetrock between each and every wall stud (spaced at 16”) and pumping loose fiberglass or cellulose fibers into the wall to densely fill the entire wall with insulation. The process is relatively simple, but requires a painter to patch the sheetrock and repaint over the many holes in your wall.

Last February’s disaster could have been minimized if the majority of Dallas-area homes had not lost power for an extended period.  With no power and no way to generate heat, other than a gas or wood-burning fireplace, even the best insulated homes eventually lost heat to the exterior after what may have been two to three days in the best of cases. Homes with less than 13 inches of insulation, which, unfortunately, is the majority of homes, lost heat much more quickly, leading to frozen pipes insides of interior walls. A quick attic inspection can tell you a few things:

1. Is the depth of blown-in insulation less than 13 inches?  If yes, then consider an upgrade that will cost, depending on the size of your attic, from $1200 to $3800 in most cases.
2. Are there interior walls that are exposed to the attic and have no insulation? These are called “hot walls,” and are a major source of energy loss.  Rolls of insulation, or batts, can rectify this problem.
3. Is there an insulated hatch cover with a zipper around any attic stairs and access doors?  A great deal of energy escapes through pull down attic stairs and doorways.  A simple and inexpensive radiant barrier device with a zipper can be installed over the hatch cover and will block most of the heat loss around the attic access.
4. Are there exposed water pipes in the attic? If water pipes are in the attic, they should be covered with pipe insulation – the foam covers that fit around the pipes and which can be found at a local Lowes, Home Depot or hardware store.

Koala Insulation of Dallas routinely performs attic inspections for free – and in less than half an hour, we can provide you with feedback on the state of your attic.