6 Professional Tips on How to Prevent Heat Loss in Winter

How to Prevent Heat Loss in Winter and Save Money

If the mere thought of winter causes you to shiver involuntarily, your house may be suffering from some issues that are making it very difficult to stay comfortable throughout the cold weather season because they are allowing for heat loss. Overland Park homeowners who know how to prevent heat loss can drastically increase their home comfort, which is pretty much priceless—but they can also save a significant amount of money on their utility bills, which is a nice perk as well.

Are you tired of getting an unpleasant shock every time you open your winter heating bills? There are some important steps you can take to prevent heat loss that will drastically reduce your energy costs. Homeowners can handle some of these tasks on their own, but others will require the help of service professionals such as the experienced team at Koala Insulation of South Kansas City. Trust your local Overland Park insulation experts to restore energy efficiency to your home with reliable insulation services.

How Can Preventing Heat Loss Save Homeowners Money?

If you haven't spent much time thinking about the factors that increase your home's energy consumption and raise costs on your energy bills, it may not be completely clear to you how you could actually save a noticeable amount of money by learning how to prevent heat loss. Understanding the natural process of heat transfer and how it impacts your home is the first step to being able to save money with these tips on how to prevent heat loss. Overland Park residents can reap some major rewards when they improve their home's ability to remain energy efficient at a comfortable temperature all winter long.

Basically, it all comes down to heat transfer. Whether it occurs through conduction, convection or radiation, heat transfer is the naturally-occurring phenomenon in which thermal energy always attempts to travel from a warm area to a colder area. Since temperatures drop below freezing during the winter in Kansas City, we need to turn our furnaces on when those cold winds start to blow in autumn. It takes quite a bit of fuel to power even the most efficient heating system, but it's worth it—after all, adequate heating is a necessity, not a luxury.

But when your house has problems like deteriorated or inadequate insulation, drafty windows, poor air circulation and other issues, it allows the heat from your furnace to escape outdoors thanks to heat transfer. That changes the temperature in your house, and your HVAC system is forced to operate more frequently for longer periods of time to compensate and bring the building back up to the temperature you have set on your thermostat. Obviously, that causes your heating system to use a lot more fuel than it would if your house was sealed against heat transfer, and that additional energy consumption results in higher energy charges on your monthly utility bills. With the help of the professionals at Koala Insulation of South Kansas City and the following tips on how to prevent heat loss, you can reduce your energy costs and give your bank account a break from the financial effect of heat transfer.

6 Ways to Prevent Heat Loss During the Cold Season

Ready to get started on some ways to prevent heat loss so you can enjoy a comfortable, cost-effective winter season? Here are six tips that can make a big difference for both your indoor comfort and your budget.

1. Upgrade or Top-Off Insulation

It'll probably come as no surprise that this is our number one tip for how to prevent heat loss, but it really is the most important thing you can do to stop heat transfer from occurring because that is the main purpose of insulation. Your home (hopefully) already has insulation installed inside the walls, in the attic space and likely other places as well, so you may be wondering why that's something you would need to worry about. Here's why: insulation such as fiberglass batts are essentially packets of fibers with tiny air pockets between the fibers, and those air pockets are what gives them the insulating power to block heat transfer. But over time, the air pockets collapse and the fibers settle under the weight of gravity, flattening out the insulation and greatly reducing its effectiveness. This also leaves an uninsulated gap at the top of the space that used to be filled with insulation that has now settled. However, there's an easy solution to deal with this problem. The team at Koala Insulation of South Kansas City can simply top-up your existing insulation with new material that will restore R-value and make your home energy efficient again.

Topping up insulation works well if the older material has compressed somewhat but isn't otherwise damaged. If it has suffered damage from excess moisture, pest infestations or other issues, however, the damaged insulation needs to be removed and replaced with a fresh insulation installation to prevent heat loss. 

Insulation that has been contaminated with rodent feces or organic growth such as mildew is not effective at preventing heat loss, and it can also pose a health risk by lowering your indoor air quality. As such, there are multiple reasons why it's important to call an insulation professional for safe, prompt insulation removal services.

2. Seal Up Air Drafts

Once your insulation is in good shape and there's a sufficient volume of it for the size of your building, the next step in how to prevent heat loss is to turn your attention to air sealing. Your exterior siding is an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to blocking heat transfer, but any holes or gaps in that outer shell are weak points that need special attention so they don't let in air drafts and encourage loss of heat—and that includes windows and doors. But because the area inside your walls is not heated, or at least it shouldn't be, heat loss can also occur through gaps or breaks in your drywall.

Koala Insulation of South Kansas City provides air sealing services, and our skilled team has plenty of experience so we know just where to look to find air drafts and prevent heat loss. Here are some of the major areas that property owners need to know about in how to prevent heat loss with air sealing:

• Window Frames: Have you ever sat down next to a window during wintertime, only to immediately get up and move because of a chilly draft coming from the window area? When window frames deteriorate from issues like wood rot or just loose, peeling caulk, gaps around windows let in air drafts and let out heat from your furnace, causing your energy costs to go up. This can often be solved with caulking service, but in some cases interior trim needs to be replaced.
• Door Jambs: Much like window frames, door jambs can suffer from deterioration that lets in drafts. They can be sealed with caulk or weather strip, and it may also be a good idea to add a simple draft excluder to the bottom of the door slab.
• Attic Hatch or Door: When it comes to attic insulation, the attic door or hatch is often neglected—and that's a big problem because heat rises and escapes through that uninsulated portal. Ensuring that the back of the attic hatch is properly insulated goes a long way to prevent heat loss.
• Electrical Outlets and Wall Switches: We mentioned above that heat transfer can occur through interior walls as well. If you notice cold drafts of air coming from electrical outlets or wall switches, or they feel noticeably cold to the touch, they need to be properly sealed to prevent air from leaking out around the edges of the switch or outlet casing.

3. Replace or Cover Single-Pane Windows

Newer homes are built with double or triple glazed windows, which means they are composed of two or three panes of glass separated by small gaps and sealed together at the edges. In some units, the gaps are filled with argon gas for extra insulating power that prevents heat transfer. But some older houses still have single pane windows, and that can be a big problem because glass is such a poor insulator on its own and one sheet of glass does very little to prevent heat loss.

The best course of action is to have them replaced with double glazing units that are a lot more capable of holding in thermal energy. But if that's simply not in your budget for this year, there's something else you can do: cover any single pane windows in your house with clear plastic sheeting during the cold months and staple it around the edges of the window frame to prevent heat loss. The plastic lets in natural light but isn't as clear as glass, so it's not a great long-term solution—but it is very surprising what a massive difference it can make for both your comfort and energy costs. Window films that block UV light and help prevent heat loss may also be a good alternative, even for double glazed windows.

4. Fill Gaps in Floorboards

Much like drywall, your flooring material helps to prevent heat loss from occurring between the space under your floor and your habitable living space indoors. But material such as solid hardwood planks can sometimes shrink or separate a bit, leaving you with small gaps between floorboards that are—you guessed it—magnets for thermal energy transfer. That's why getting those gaps filled in should be on the list when you're looking for tips on how to prevent heat loss. Overland Park houses look great with hardwood floors, and they're an energy efficient choice as long as they are properly maintained.

5. Cap Unused Chimneys

If you have a fireplace in your home, it may be part of your strategy for staying warm this winter. There's nothing like a roaring fire when it's snowing outside. But if you only use your fireplace rarely, if ever, it makes sense to consider having the chimney capped off during winter to prevent all that heat from your furnace from escaping right up the chimney and costing you an arm and a leg on your heating bill. You can also block off the fireplace inside your home with a sealed cover so you don't have to pay to heat the space inside your chimney.

6. Insulate Your Basement

If your basement is unfinished—or even if it is finished—it may not be properly insulated. That doesn't seem like such a big deal when it's not part of the livable space in your house, but it can cause thermal energy transfer problems that do affect the rooms above. Cold air builds up in the basement space and seeps into the rooms above, lowering the temperature in the main story of your house and causing your HVAC system to work harder. We can prevent heat loss by insulating your basement to prevent it from compromising energy efficiency throughout the entire building.

Want to Know How to Prevent Heat Loss? Overland Park Can Rely on Koala Insulation for Expert Help

Whether you're in Overland Park or another part of the Kansas City area such as Prairie Village, Lee's Summit or Mission Hills, you can count on the top-rated insulation pros at Koala Insulation of South Kansas City to help you prevent heat loss and keep your home toasty warm all winter long with professional insights and expert services for all your insulation needs, including batt insulation, blown-in insulation and spray foam insulation.

Get started by giving us a call at 816-929-8255 to speak with our reliable customer service representatives and find out more, or make an appointment for us to come out and evaluate your home for energy efficiency problems such as damaged insulation.