There are simple ways to help create a more energy-efficient home: you can change to LED lightbulbs, switch to a smart thermostat, install dimmer switches and motion sensors for the lights in your home, upgrade to energy-efficient appliances, and more. These small changes can make more of an impact than you’d realize, but in making these upgrades, you are really only making the features of your home more energy-efficient. If you want your house itself to conserve energy, then you need to take your ambition to the foundation: the frame of your home.
This doesn’t mean you need a complete rebuild; rather, you can make your home’s envelope — it’s a barrier between the inside and the outside — more energy efficient by targeting two key areas: the windows and insulation.
How to build an energy-efficient home: windows
The simplest fix is your windows. Consider it this way: you have a lot of windows in your home, and if they are letting light in and aren’t energy efficient, then they are letting energy go to waste, too. This happens in the summer and winter alike. In the summer, your inefficient windows are letting the heat from the sun into your home along with the sunlight, and that means your A/C has to work a lot harder to keep your home comfortable. In the winter, you could be using a lot more than the energy you need to heat your home to accommodate the amount of heat that is lost through the windows. Thus, the first step to building a truly energy-efficient home is to swap in some energy-efficient windows.
Which windows should you choose?
Think Low-E, for low-emissivity. Low-E glass has a thin coating that reflects infrared and UV light, keeping the heat from the sun out and the heat from your furnace in—all without impacting the amount of light that comes into your home, making it a much more functional and effective solution than using heavy curtains to do the same work. Low-E windows come in two types (passive or hard-coat, and solar control or soft-coat), allowing you to choose the best window performance to create the most energy-efficient home for your climate. Just remember, the glass isn’t the only part of your windows (and doors) that need to be considered. If you want truly energy-efficient windows and doors, you need to make sure the seals around them are up to par as well.
What about insulating your home?
The next step to an energy-efficient home is all in the insulation. Just as with your windows, you can conserve energy by ensuring the barrier keeping the heat in or out of your home is working efficiently. That may mean replacing your insulation—but which type should you choose to best insulate your home: traditional batt fibreglass or spray-in foam?
Spray-in foam is proving to be the better choice for energy-efficient homes, both in efficiency and functionality. Because it creates a gap-free, air-tight barrier, spray-in foams offer superior thermal protection. In fact, homes with spray-in foam insulation have been estimated to save between 30-50 percent on energy costs per year.
Learn more about saving energy in your home
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