Benefits of Insulation in Cold Climate

The choice of insulation for domestic or commercial spaces should be in harmony with the climatic conditions. Cold climate insulation is perhaps the most common and easily understood form of insulation. For starters, most of the early insulation choices were essentially for preserving the heat within a room.

People in colder regions still depend upon many classic insulation choices to retain the warmth. However, insulation for colder climates has evolved. Today, you get to choose across an array of choices. The most popular among these is Reflective Insulation.

Basics of Insulation: How does Reflective Insulation affect your home’s temperature?

Home renovation and insulation experts recommend spending on insulating the external walls to reduce loss of heat due to radiant, conducted, and convected heat transfer.

Heat flows/moves through three primary mechanisms—direct contact or conduction, heat transfer from fluids or convection, and through electromagnetic waves or radiative heat transfer. Reflective Insulation is the preferred choice for insulating the building in cold climatic conditions. Reflective insulation is essentially thermal insulation. It helps to keep the interiors warmer by ensuring that the loss of heat through radiation, also called Radiative Heat, is minimized.

Radiative heat transfer is one of the most common mediums through which heat is transferred. For instance, thermal radiation in the form of electromagnetic waves allows sunlight to reach the Earth, traveling through vast expanses of vacuum and structural entities.

Radiative heat causes transfer of heat to the outside of a home. This is the heat generated from a fireplace, an air conditioning system, or a stove. This loss of heat happens for a major part of the day. This means extra load on the building’s heating system, leading to higher energy bills! Wall insulation options for homes facing prolonged winter conditions include insulating:

•    Within/Outside the stud frames

•    Any cavities in the walls

•    Inside/Outside of solid walls

Basic Insulation Options for Cold Climate

You should be aware about the need to comprehensively insulate the floor, i.e. in cooler climates. This includes insulating the underside of any suspended floor in your house. Sometimes, insulating the underside of on-ground slabs is also useful. For instance, colder, hilly areas often have cold groundwater that can lead to exponentially high loss of heat. This loss of heat can be trapped effectively with radiant barrier insulation products as this  shiny flexible membrane can be used in unlimited ways to help control the transfer of heat.

Enclosing subfloor spaces can be helpful to reduce the transfer of heat in such cases. These options are more relevant for homes facing perpetually low temperatures, like those found in alpine regions. Other applications include homes in temperate climates with shorter winters and in highly humid areas that face heavy rainfall.