The Garage is boiling hot and guess what its connected to?! Insulating your house tries to minimize the heat exchange, as an example, if it was 120 degrees out and you were cooling your house to 60 degrees no matter what R-Value you have your home will need energy to maintain that 60 degrees. On the other hand, if it is 60 degrees out it will take no energy to maintain the 60 degrees, internal temp. The hotter it is outside, the more energy it takes to keep inside cool.
I found this out a couple of summers ago when I was lying in the bedroom, and I couldn't get the room to cool. I took my handy-dandy infrared temp and started poking around to see where I was losing the most cool air, or gaining the most hot air!
Let me back up a minute here ...
I moved into this home in about 2012, there were aluminum single pane windows, and my assumption was that was the reason the house was so darn hot. Thus, I went to work. I replaced all the windows with new efficient windows (YES DIY!) It made a world of difference probably 2 or 3 degrees, which if you have ever felt the difference between about 92 and 89 you would understand! The biggest difference was made was when I took a look at the attic insulation or lack there of! I hired a guy (yes I hired a guy) to come out and blow in insulation; we spoke for a few hours just bullshitting, and I was able to get a lot of knowledge out of him! His overwhelming message is that you need to increase airflow, increasing airflow will drastically change your home temperature over adding R-Value. While we did do an R60, he did say that the bigger difference will be when he installs the proper ventilation in the attic. He added both cross ventilation and top ventilation.
The next week was well into the 90s all week, and the house didn't get above 82 without the use of anything! Just adding blown in insulation and ventilation caused nearly a 7-degree difference!
And here we are, poking around with my infrared gun to see what was happening, a funny thing, my windows were awesome! Showing no difference in temp and ambient temp, my ceilings were similar with only a degree or so hotter, my walls were a few degrees hotter, except in the bedroom, our west facing wall was nearly 15 degrees hotter and our south facing wall about 10 degrees. But only on the bottom of the wall, not the top, the top was reading similar readings to the rest of the walls. WHY IS THAT?!
Take a look at the house:
This is the west side of the house, thus, the bedroom is on the upper right. Notice the roof from the garage carries over all the way across the house under the two windows. That is about 4' of a cavity that has nothing in it except trapped air. Inside that cavity was easily getting to 140 degrees when the sun was just baking on it. Thus, the walls were combating 140 degrees, not the 90s that the actual temperature was, this is/was the reason for the huge temperature reads in the house.
This brought me back to my insulation guys talk, air flow, I got to figure out how to get air flow through that cavity. From the inside of the garage you can see that the cavity connects openly:
Notice the dark corner in the upper left side of the rafters that runs the entire length of the house.
The garage has NO ventilation. Therefore, the garage was getting blazing hot as well! Easily into the 120s if not higher. So on the opposite side of the garage wall (south side), I installed a vent fan designed to turn on at 105.
On the other side of the house (north/west) side, I installed a vent. Therefore, this high volume fan when temps reach 105 will suck the air from the other end and exhaust it outside my house. Thus in theory, I just took the cavity that stretched the entire length of my home by 4' and took it from 140 to 105 by installing about $100 worth of equipment, NO insulation at all, just airflow.
The difference in the home was insane! My walls began reading similar as the rest of the walls and now my house with NO cooling at all even on the hottest of days doesn't get over 78. Therefore, for less than 100 bucks I saved myself 4 degrees! Cheapest cooler EVER!
I found this out a couple of summers ago when I was lying in the bedroom, and I couldn't get the room to cool. I took my handy-dandy infrared temp and started poking around to see where I was losing the most cool air, or gaining the most hot air!
Let me back up a minute here ...
I moved into this home in about 2012, there were aluminum single pane windows, and my assumption was that was the reason the house was so darn hot. Thus, I went to work. I replaced all the windows with new efficient windows (YES DIY!) It made a world of difference probably 2 or 3 degrees, which if you have ever felt the difference between about 92 and 89 you would understand! The biggest difference was made was when I took a look at the attic insulation or lack there of! I hired a guy (yes I hired a guy) to come out and blow in insulation; we spoke for a few hours just bullshitting, and I was able to get a lot of knowledge out of him! His overwhelming message is that you need to increase airflow, increasing airflow will drastically change your home temperature over adding R-Value. While we did do an R60, he did say that the bigger difference will be when he installs the proper ventilation in the attic. He added both cross ventilation and top ventilation.
The next week was well into the 90s all week, and the house didn't get above 82 without the use of anything! Just adding blown in insulation and ventilation caused nearly a 7-degree difference!
And here we are, poking around with my infrared gun to see what was happening, a funny thing, my windows were awesome! Showing no difference in temp and ambient temp, my ceilings were similar with only a degree or so hotter, my walls were a few degrees hotter, except in the bedroom, our west facing wall was nearly 15 degrees hotter and our south facing wall about 10 degrees. But only on the bottom of the wall, not the top, the top was reading similar readings to the rest of the walls. WHY IS THAT?!
Take a look at the house:
This is the west side of the house, thus, the bedroom is on the upper right. Notice the roof from the garage carries over all the way across the house under the two windows. That is about 4' of a cavity that has nothing in it except trapped air. Inside that cavity was easily getting to 140 degrees when the sun was just baking on it. Thus, the walls were combating 140 degrees, not the 90s that the actual temperature was, this is/was the reason for the huge temperature reads in the house.
This brought me back to my insulation guys talk, air flow, I got to figure out how to get air flow through that cavity. From the inside of the garage you can see that the cavity connects openly:
Notice the dark corner in the upper left side of the rafters that runs the entire length of the house.
The garage has NO ventilation. Therefore, the garage was getting blazing hot as well! Easily into the 120s if not higher. So on the opposite side of the garage wall (south side), I installed a vent fan designed to turn on at 105.
On the other side of the house (north/west) side, I installed a vent. Therefore, this high volume fan when temps reach 105 will suck the air from the other end and exhaust it outside my house. Thus in theory, I just took the cavity that stretched the entire length of my home by 4' and took it from 140 to 105 by installing about $100 worth of equipment, NO insulation at all, just airflow.
The difference in the home was insane! My walls began reading similar as the rest of the walls and now my house with NO cooling at all even on the hottest of days doesn't get over 78. Therefore, for less than 100 bucks I saved myself 4 degrees! Cheapest cooler EVER!
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