It’s Minnesota, and winter lasts what feels like at least half of the year. That’s six months of running your furnace and racking up your heating bill. That’s also six months of being cold and having to deal with a drafty home. Unless your home is properly insulated.
Having your home insulation replaced can having several amazing impacts, some of which you may not have even considered.
1. Comfortability
Having a properly insulated home will increase your comfortability without having to crank up the thermostat. You’ll be able to avoid drafty rooms, windows, and doors as well as cold-to-the-touch walls.
Spray foam insulation in particular does an amazing job at sealing up “attics, walls, ceilings, basements, and crawlspaces, and on roofs, exteriors, and gaps and cracks!” Read more about spray foam insulation here.
2. Extending the life of your furnace or heating unit
Running your furnace over and over and over again every single day throughout all six months of cold weather will eventually take a toll on your heating system. Getting a new furnace or having your heating unit serviced is just another expense no one really wants to pay for.
By having a well-insulated home, your home will retain heat better, keep out chilly drafts, and decrease the number of times you hear your furnace kick on!
3. Saving money on your utility bills
Utility bills skyrocket when winter’s finally here, especially when temperatures consistently drop below zero degrees. Just as insulation will help you extend the life of your furnace, it will also help you save some money on your utility bill. If your furnace runs half the time, that’s half the amount of energy going to running it.
You can read more about understanding and cutting down your utility bill here!
4. Avoiding freezing pipes
Pipes burst when the water inside them freezes, expands, and cracks the plumbing. Pipes tend to freeze when they aren’t properly insulted.
When pipes freeze, they can crack and burst, leaving your home flooding with water. This means having to get the pipes fix, the water removed, the floors dried and cleaned, and a fat bill. It’s hard to know that your at risk of freezing pipes until it happens to you. With spray foam insulation especially, you can save yourself a lot of hassle.
5. Keeping your roof free of ice dams
What are ice dams? According to the University of Minnesota, ice dams are “[ridges] of ice that [form] at the edge of a roof and prevents melting snow (water) from draining off the roof.” Water that’s prevented from running off the roof can end up leaking into the home, causing “damage to walls, ceilings, insulation and other areas,” including your gutter system. You can read more about ice dams here.
Properly insulating your attic is one significant way you can avoid this. An insulated attic prevents the uneven heating and cooling of the space as well as the uneven melting and freezing of the snow above.
Get started with NorthStar Insulating
You don’t need to wait for winter to be over to reinsulate your home! Contact us today to talk more about saying goodbye to your cold, drafty house.
