Insulation
Seal Your Home the Right Way
Weatherization helps tighten up a building for greater energy efficiency and comfort so that occupants do not have to resort to makeshift ways of sealing air leaks.
Seal it with Care
When sealing up gaps to insulate, you may run the risk of altering the historic materials and details that make your older home unique.
Put Your Home to the Test
Blower door tests can help assess the tightness of your building and whether or not you should proceed with adding or changing your insulation.
Keep an Eye on Your Home
Your older building can tell you if there are problems, so always watch for signs of moisture and inadequate ventilation.
Insulating Walls Can Be Risky
By adding insulation to walls, you risk not only disrupting original materials and details, but creating future problems with moisture intrusion, dampness, and mold growth.
Adding insulation can be good for your home, but you might be surprised to find that it does not always make as big of an impact as other types of efficiency-minded home improvement projects.
Regardless, when insulating, it is critically important to consider the uniqueness of your building, the characteristics of its materials, the climate in which it resides, and the specific building methods that were used in its construction. Always keep in mind that improperly adding insulation to a building has the potential to wreak havoc on its overall performance. You can (perhaps unknowingly) do irreparable damage to priceless historic features by adding insulation where it is not needed, inappropriate, or ineffective.
Many older and historic homes were not designed with insulation, so it requires great care to select compatible insulating systems and materials. Older buildings, or those built before modern HVAC systems existed, were actually built to deal with the movement of air naturally through special design features. If your building was constructed before 1950, you need to give careful consideration before upgrading insulation. All systems – new and old – need to work in harmony.
The following frequently asked questions are intended to not only inform and inspire, but to demonstrate how you can properly insulate your older and historic home.
Want to dig deeper? Visit our Whole House Resource Bank for links to some of the best weatherization information and materials available online. From insightful blogs and articles by the experts, to checklists and how-to's, you’ll find it all here.
