According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, hot air is a little like cold air’s kid brother. Heat wants to be everywhere cold is. In winter, warm air is trying to escape your home to get outside and be with cold air. In summer it’s the reverse. Warm air is trying to sneak in through every crack and crevice to be with cold air.
“Heat transfer occurs spontaneously from higher- to lower-temperature bodies but never spontaneously in the reverse direction. The law states that it is impossible for any process to have as its sole result heat transfer from a cooler to a hotter object.”
Spray Foam Insulation Prevents Air Exchange
Insulation is a thermal barrier. Think of a thermos. It keeps the heat of your soup from escaping out into the cooler air of the room and also keeps it from getting inside the thermos to warm up your iced tea. The same principle is at work in a comfortable home.
If it’s a hot and sweaty 90 degrees outside and you want to be a cool and comfortable 72 degrees inside your house, you’ll need to run the air conditioner. If your attic, roof, ceiling, doors, windows, walls, ducts, crawl space, and basement aren’t insulated, the heat will seep into your house, causing your air conditioner to have to run more and cost more money. It might even overwhelm the capacity of the air conditioner to keep the temperature at the level you desire — running constantly to try to keep the temperature at 72, but unable to get it any lower than 78.
As your home loses cool air, an equal amount of hot, humid air enters your home to replace the cool air that was lost. This invisible process called air exchange is typically one of the main contributing factors for hot, sticky homes during the summer.
VersiFoam spray foam insulation expands to fill the entire space where it’s applied, sealing cracks and crevices and reducing the overall leakiness of your home. It also acts as a sound dampener and a barrier to pollutants.
Insulating the attic keeps the cool air down in your living spaces. When the sun beats down on your roof and the hot air tries to enter your house it’s stopped in its tracks by your spray foam insulation. Sealing windows and doors everywhere there is a space where sunlight is coming in creates a barrier to the intrusion of warm air from the outside during the summer.
Once you’ve made sure your house is insulated properly, don’t forget to keep the sun’s rays out by closing your drapes or blinds when the sun is shining directly on the window. You can also take advantage of the cool (and free) night air by opening doors and windows as soon as the air cools in the evening and closing them before bed. As always, switch off unused heat sources and use LED light bulbs.
Spray foam insulation plus common sense will keep you cool and comfortable inside no matter how hot it gets outside.
