Proper heat management systems and insulation are essential for residential and commercial buildings, so the best property owners can do to optimize energy efficiency is to learn the basics of how they work. However, if you want to take a step forward from that, you can always learn new ways of optimizing effective heat management in your place.
Radiant barriers are an excellent way to do that, but not many people know what they are about. Using them will help you save a lot of money on monthly energy bills, as they are excellent for optimizing energy efficiency. What is a radiant barrier? Dive into this page to learn everything you need to know about them.
How Does Radiant Barriers Work?
When we talk about radiant barriers, we talk about specific insulation materials to reflect heat instead of absorbing it, which is what most heating systems do. These barriers consist of a thin layer of aluminum foil installed to the underside of your roof or attic space. Other reflective materials should work, too.
The purpose of using radiant heat barriers is to reflect the sun’s heat away from your roof or attic. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be any heat in your house, but that there will be a significant reduction in it. People often use radiant barriers to reduce cooling and insulation costs.
Unlike traditional insulation, people often install radiant barriers on their roofs or to transfer heat from their attic. Why? Because when you install a radiant barrier, you reflect the direct heat you get from the sun, so it’s not that effective to install it to block other sources of heat such as hot air.
Benefits of Radiant Barriers
Installing radiant barriers in your house brings many benefits to the table, which is the reason they become more popular each year. First, they can genuinely reduce monthly cooling costs. You may think it’s not a significant change, but in the summer months, when people use these systems the most, radiant barriers can save you much more money than you think.
Besides that, radiant barrier insulation is excellent for naturally improving the comfort of your house. People often use cooling devices to reduce the hot spots in their rooms, but the area will go back to being hot as soon as they turn them off, which leads to many temperature fluctuations.
When you use radiant barrier insulation, you directly lower the temperature in your house, regardless of the cooling devices you have on. However, one of the main benefits of radiant barriers, ironically, doesn’t have anything to do with heat reduction.
Installing radiant barrier insulation in your house can significantly extend the lifespan of your roofing materials and save you a lot of money on roof repair, maintenance, and future replacements. The reason for that is that the sun’s heat deteriorates your roof over time, so reducing that heat with a radiant barrier will lead to a healthier and more durable roof.
You can also minimize dust accumulation with a reflective surface. Attic insulation requires special maintenance, as the reflective surface must stay clean to work effectively. In a nutshell, whether it’s a roof made from scratch or if you get radiant barrier products applied to one already there, you will get a stronger roofing solution.
Can I Replace Traditional Insulation With Radiant Barriers?
Radiant barriers should never be a replacement for traditional insulation, and using them for that purpose causes the opposite effect and increases the temperature in your house. As mentioned before, people mostly install radiant barriers on roofs so they only block direct heat from the sun. Using it to replace traditional insulation would mean forgetting about insulating your walls.
You should always use traditional insulation materials, such as fiberglass and cellulose to address the other parts of your building. The idea of using radiant barriers is to optimize the benefits you already get from traditional insulation and optimize the energy efficiency of your property.
This also means you shouldn’t get rid of the cooling devices in your house just because you installed radiant energy saving insulation. They will surely reduce the temperature in your house, but that doesn’t mean it will never be hot in there, especially in summer.
Will your house be even colder in cold seasons, such as winter? It will, so you need to keep that in mind before installing radiant heat transfer solutions. Fortunately, you have other ways of keeping your house’s heat stable apart from radiant heating insulation, such as wearing sweaters or wrapping up in blankets.
Is Installing Radiant Barriers Difficult?
Installing radiant barrier insulation is not difficult at all, and you can add them to existing homes as well as include them in the construction plan for new properties. You can install a radiant barrier on the underside of the roof decking, and while you can still use them for walls and floors, it’s not that common to do it.
The time it takes to install radiant barriers depends on the size and complexity of the whole project. Naturally, we are talking about adding the barriers to an existing roof since including them in a new construction project comes as a part of the whole process.
Adding radiant barrier insulation to your roof can take a few hours in simple cases or a few days in larger projects. However, installing a radiant barrier in your roof or attic should never take more than a week unless it’s an extremely complex case. Professionals first need to identify the areas that need the barriers, pick the right materials for them, and install them.
In some cases, they may need to remove existing insulation and adapt the roof’s surface to the materials used for the barrier. While other construction projects can support DIY approaches, it’s better to look online for “radiant barrier installation near me” and call a professional to get the job done if you want to fully enjoy the benefits these barriers offer.
Final Thoughts
While the old ways are still reliable, it’s important to stay tuned to the latest developments to get the most benefits you can from our cooling or heating systems. Energy bills can take a huge toll on your pocket, so anything that helps you make them more affordable will prove profitable in the long run.
Radiant barriers are not as popular as other heating solutions, but they are as effective as them. You can learn more about radiant barriers by contacting a professional contractor or construction company. If you want to read similar blog posts to this one, don’t forget to check out our website and see what we have for you.
