Just as adequate insulation and ventilation are important to ensure during the summer cooling season, they also play a key role in your household comfort and efficiency during the winter heating season. Investing in proper insulation levels while ensuring that your home’s ventilation needs are being met will go a long way toward keeping you (and your household budget) comfortable this winter and year-round.

How insulation and ventilation work together

When the weather is warm, your home’s insulation (especially attic insulation) acts as a barrier to hot air that is trying to radiate into your living areas. In turn, your home’s ventilation system keeps air circulating in order to prevent heat and moisture buildup in areas like your attic and ensure that your home isn’t so airtight that your indoor air quality is degraded.

Just like in the summertime, you want to keep heat out of your attic during the colder weather. One reason is because a warmed attic can melt snow or ice that has formed on your roof, causing it to re-freeze in your gutters as ice dams and cause serious damage to the roof and walls of your home. Also, if warm air is collecting in your attic in the winter, it’s coming from your living spaces. This means you’re paying to condition air that’s escaping into the attic. Insulation will prevent the heat produced by your furnace from rising to your attic, and proper ventilation will help draw cooler air inside the attic so that any frozen water on your roof stays frozen until the outside temperature rises enough for it to safely melt from your roof.

Improving insulation and ventilation

Though it’s true that the more insulation your home has, the less work your HVAC equipment will have to do, there’s no need to overdo it. Work with a trusted HVAC contractor to compare your insulation’s R-Value against the number recommended for our area by the U.S. Department of Energy, and also to asses your home’s ventilation needs. A professional will help you to boost your home’s efficiency without compromising much-needed ventilation.

For more advice on insulation and ventilation, please contact the professionals at Overland Park Heating & Cooling. We proudly serve the greater Kansas City area.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Overland Park, Kansas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). 

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