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All structures, including your home, have air gaps and crevices that allow air to infiltrate the building.  Weather, pressures, and conditions beyond your control, exploit these openings allowing air to infiltrate your home..

According to the Department of Energy, up to 40% of energy loss is due to air infiltration.

Source

When air from the outside replaces the air in your home, it is called a “Natural Air Change”.  Homes built years ago can have more than 3 Natural Air Changes an hour.  This means that conditioned air inside your home could leak out and be replaced by outside air up to 70 times a day, requiring you to heat or cool outside air that continues to infiltrate into your home.

Demilec USA’s spray foam is much more than a great insulation.  Our spray foam expands up to 120 times to fill every crack, gap, void or crevice as it creates an air barrier, dramatically reducing the energy consumption of your home.

Attic Temperature

Have you noticed that no matter how many vents you put in your attic, it still gets much hotter than the outside temperature?  Radiant heat loads can raise attic temperatures to over 150 degrees.

Even when there is no mechanical system in your attic, these extreme temperatures are constantly working like a heating pad or ice pack sitting on the ceiling of your home.  Spray foam from Demilec USA creates a barrier that is so effective; it is like putting the lid on top of a foam cooler.   If you were going to the lake and taking beverages you wanted to keep hot or cold, would you put them in a cooler or wrap them in fiberglass?

Putting this “lid” on your home is more important than you may know.  Heat will always rise, regardless of the season. “Stack Effect” is where hot air naturally rises up and escapes through light fixtures, power outlets, molding and other areas.  The air that rises creates a negative pressure in the building that draws in unconditioned air at the base of the structure.

To create this barrier, a Demilec USA Authorized Contractor can spray our products directly to your attic floor, or in areas where the mechanical system or ductwork is in the attic, they can create an unvented attic assembly for you.

Anytime your ductwork or mechanical systems are in the attic, the attic temperature heats up the ductwork and forces the system to work harder to overcome the extreme temperature.  Even in winter the cold attic temperatures create a greater load for the system to overcome.

One of the most popular and beneficial upgrades that yields outstanding energy savings is the “conditioned” or “unvented” attic assembly.  It has proven to be an extremely effective energy saving method compared to the conventional attic assembly, when the upper boundary of the structure’s thermal and pressure envelope is moved from the ceiling to the roofline. The residential codes have recognized this method of insulating the underside of the roof since 2004 and identify the specific requirements for this application.  The Unvented Attic Assembly seals off the attic and turns the area into semi-conditioned space.  When this process is done correctly, the radiant heat load will be drastically reduced, keeping the attic temperature within 5-10 degrees of the living area and moving the mechanical system into conditioned space.

For more information on the process, or where and how spray foam can benefit your home please go back to the Retrofit page on our website

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