Why Air Sealing Is the Responsible Thing to Do?
Today, most homes have air leaks that waste energy. This results in significantly more GHG emissions and higher energy bills.
Air sealing creates a continuous air barrier that stops air leaks in their tracks. That includes sealing the sheet materials that make up your ceilings, walls, and floors..
Did you know that the US consumed 3.9 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in 2021?
That's a whopping 13 times more than the nation's consumption back in 1950! Of that 3.9 trillion kWh, 38.9%, or 1.4 trillion kWh, went toward powering U.S. homes.
It's no wonder, then, that residential energy use makes up 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S.
Today, most homes have air leaks that waste energy. This results in significantly more GHG emissions and higher energy bills.
Fortunately, air sealing your home can help mitigate energy losses and tamp down excess costs associated with air leakage. Stinting those losses can help counter the effects of higher energy consumption nationally.
This guide discusses what air sealing is, how air sealing can help, and what makes it a responsible investment.
Read on to discover why it should be your next home improvement project.
What Is Air Leakage?
Also known as air infiltration, air leaks occur through cracks and gaps that introduce unwanted outside air into an enclosed space and allow conditioned air to escape outdoors. Air leakage often worsens as a building ages.
In the summer, moist outdoor air can enter a leaky or drafty house. At the same time, cold air from an air conditioning system seeps out of the home via cracks and gaps.
In the winter, a leaky home allows frosty air to enter and create cold surfaces and cavities. When warm, moist air inside the house gets into those areas, condensation occurs. Over time, all that moisture can lead to mold growth or rotting and deterioration of structural components.
What Is Air Sealing?
Air sealing is the filling of small spaces that allow the free transfer of exterior and interior air in your building. It creates a continuous air barrier that stops air leaks in their tracks. That includes sealing the sheet materials that make up your ceilings, walls, and floors.
Most importantly, it involves blocking holes in the attic, basement, and crawlspace.
In the average home, there are so many areas where air leakage occurs that it's best to have your home tested for leaks. A home energy audit by a construction professional is the most accurate way to find those leaks.
How Exactly Does Air Sealing Help?
Air leaks are all over your home and, most significantly, in your attic and crawlspace. Sealing them is one of the most cost-effective ways to create a more energy-efficient home. Moreover, it helps keep your home comfortable and your indoor air healthy.
Improves Energy-Efficiency
Air sealing helps make your home energy-efficient as it cuts energy waste caused by air leaks. It prevents precious conditioned air from leaving your home.
As a result, your heating system and air conditioner can perform more efficiently. You can keep the conditioned air from the heater or AC where you want it, inside your home.
That also helps reduce the load you place on your HVAC system. When it doesn't have to work harder to keep you comfortable, you can reduce your energy consumption while simultaneously cutting energy costs.
Helps Boost Insulation Performance
Insulating your home allows it to become more resistant to energy transfer. One reason is that it creates a better barrier between your home's interior and the outside. It prevents exterior heat from entering in the summer or allowing your heated spaces to leak outside in the winter.
On the other hand, a lack of insulation invites the transfer of cold and hot air, as well as humidity. Uninsulated spaces, empty or ineffectively filled bays in walls, attics, or under a building, provide no barrier, or at best an inefficient one, against cold or hot air from the outside penetrating indoors.
Insulating your attic, basement, crawlspace, and walls act as a very effective fortification against air transfer.
Air sealing helps your insulation perform better as it stops excess airflow. With less unwanted air entering your home, your insulation has less cold or hot air moving through it, not to mention moisture.
Therefore, pairing insulation with air sealing can help you save more on your energy bill.
Insulating your attic, basement, crawlspace and walls act as a very effective fortification against air transfer. Air sealing helps your insulation perform better as it stops excess airflow. With less unwanted air entering your home, your insulation has less cold or hot air moving through it, not to mention moisture.
Rich from Ardor Construction staples a smart air and vapor barrier system into an existing attic to help control vapor and moisture transfer.
Better Temperature Regulation
The hotter or colder your indoor space is, the longer it takes to cool it down or warm it up. Your HVAC system then has to work harder to reach your desired temperature. As a result, your energy bills increase.
With air sealing, you can prevent excess heat and cold inside your home. That can make it easier for your HVAC system to regulate your indoor climate.
Minimizes Risk of Mold and Rot
Molds can grow in as little as 24 to 48 hours under the right conditions. In the presence of oxygen and moisture, mold can grow on organic materials in your walls, attic, and crawl spaces.
Molds induce rot in structural components. Exposure to mold can lead to adverse respiratory and skin effects. They can also be particularly dangerous to the millions of Americans with allergies.
Air sealing can help reduce the risks of such hazards as it blocks the holes where mold spores can enter. Additionally, it can help reduce the moisture-laden air that infiltrates your home.
Moreover, effective air sealing requires creating a true air barrier. Also called smart air barriers or air and vapor barriers, these systems help control vapor and moisture transfer. They also help reduce air infiltration and leakage into the attic and wall cavities.
Thus, air and vapor barriers work hand in hand with air sealing to prevent mold and rot.
Enhances Air Quality
Molds and their spores are some of the most common air pollutants. However, outdoor air also contains particulate matter (PM), ozone, and other toxic contaminants. Unless your home is professionally air sealed, the air infiltrating your home may act as a carrier for these hazards.
Air sealing is even more crucial if you live in a city with heavily polluted air, such as New York City. The City of NY received an F grade in the 2022 State of the Air report.
What Makes Air Sealing Environmentally Responsible?
Air sealing helps you become a responsible homeowner by lowering your carbon footprint. It provides you with a way to reduce energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels. Moreover, sealing the tiny gaps and cracks to control pest presence in your home mitigates numerous health concerns.
Lower Carbon Footprint
Every time a power plant generates one kWh of energy, it releases 0.889 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Fossil fuels are used to power the production of energy across America. This energy production emits CO2.
Coal tops the list of CO2 emitting fuel sources, producing 2.2 pounds of CO2e per kWh, while petroleum emits 1.9 pounds. Natural gas has the lowest emissions of all fossil fuels but still generates 0.9 pounds of CO2e per kWh.
Every time you use energy at home, chances are a power plant somewhere burns fossil fuels. The more energy you use, the more CO2 the power plant emits. Unfortunately, CO2 is the Green House Gas with the most significant contribution to climate change.
Minimizing your energy consumption at home can also help reduce those emissions.
Air sealing can help because it makes your home more energy-efficient. As a result, it can lower your carbon footprint.
Recycled Sealing and Insulating Materials
You can further reduce your environmental impact by using recycled air sealing materials.
Cellulose is a perfect example; it not only blocks air leaks but also serves as insulation. It's effective for air sealing and insulation because it doesn't leave air pockets. Instead, it fills cavities, whether in your attic, walls, or floors.
Cellulose for air sealing and insulation consists primarily of recycled post-consumer paper products. It contains more than 80% of recycled materials, mostly newsprint.
Cellulose manufacturing helps reduce the carbon footprint of end-of-life paper products significantly. Americans use millions of tons of paper in a year, and recycling paper waste helps keep it from getting burned or ending up in landfills.
Manufacturing cellulose insulation itself requires significantly lower energy than other insulation products. So while it still has a carbon footprint, it's much smaller.
Air sealing and cellulose insulation help make your home more durable and resistant to the elements. That includes damage from moisture, mold, and rot. In addition, cellulose is a fire retardant, repels pests, and dampens sound.
Cellulose installation also involves creating a true air barrier. That requires using air sealing membranes like Intello Plus specifically designed to air seal the home. They hold the cellulose blown into the walls.
It's also possible to install smart membranes, such as the Solitex Mento 1000, to the exterior of a home.
Air sealing tape, for example, Tescon Vana, then secures the smart membranes. It also helps seal small gaps, cracks, and sheet goods.
Finally, caulk, such as Contega HF, fills tiny gaps.
All that helps improve your home's durability. A more durable house means fewer surprise repairs and greater overall longevity. So, the fewer problems your home develops, the less you need to spend on repairs.
Opportunity to Create a Carbon Sink Home
A carbon sink secures and absorbs more carbon present in the atmosphere than it releases. That process is what we refer to as carbon sequestration. The ocean, forests, and soil are the world's primary carbon sinks and sequesters.
However, the atmosphere now has more carbon than those carbon sinks can sequester. For that reason, the use of artificial carbon sinks is becoming increasingly important.
The good news is that using cellulose for insulation can turn your home into a carbon sink. It acts as storage for the carbon stored in its recovered paper fiber content. As a result, it helps prevent the release of carbon from those recycled materials.
Combined with its low embodied energy and its ability to trap carbon for the life of the home, cellulose is not only an eco-friendly choice; using high percentages of cellulose insulation can turn your home into a carbon sink.
Combined with its low embodied energy and its ability to trap carbon for the life of the home, using high percentages of cellulose insulation can turn your home into a carbon sink.
Rich from Ardor Construction uses eco-friendly cellulose insulation to insulate an existing attic by blowing in a thick, fluffy blanket of Loose Fill Blown-In Cellulose.
Time to Air Seal Your Home
As you can see, air sealing is the responsible thing to do! It helps to modernize your home, reduce your carbon footprint, lower your energy bills and create a healthy, more comfortable home!
So, why not consider air sealing your home and insulating it with cellulose? The sooner you do, the sooner you can become a more responsible homeowner.
If you're ready to create a greener home with proper air sealing, we here at Ardor Construction can help. Call us now, and we'll be happy to help make your indoor space comfier, cozier, and more eco-friendly!