Is Insulating The Walls In Your House Worth It

Lately it has been extremely cold! Have you thought about insulating the walls in your house? Have you looked at pricing for insulation and wondered if it will be worth the cost and time to insulate the walls or attic of your home? I can help you decide.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a couple articles, “How to Insulate Your Walls” and “How to Insulate Your Attic”. I encourage you to read the two articles to get some in-depth information on the process of insulating your walls and attic.

I insulated my walls and attic in the very beginning of November. It has been a couple months now and the temperatures have been extremely low, so I thought I would update everyone on the effectiveness of insulating the walls and attic.

I want to point out that I used Cellulose Insulation, I dense packed the walls and loose filled the attic to about 16 inches.

To help us decide if insulating was worth the time and money, I am going to look at two areas, Comfort Level and Gas Usage.

Comfort Level

This is a hard topic to show proof for so you will have to take my word for it. This is also a topic that no one can agree on. Some people think the heat should be set to 68 and others think 72, no one can agree on what feels comfortable.

Personally, I like the heat set at 70 my wife would prefer the heat set to 72, so we are not too far off. One thing is for sure, neither one of us like to be cold!

So, to decide on comfort level of insulating I will be comparing how my own home felt before we insulated and after we insulated.

Before Insulating

Before we insulated our house felt cold even with the thermostat set to 72. Our walls felt cold and when sitting next to the walls you could feel the cold radiating from the wall.

The rooms that were on the end of the house were also way colder then the rest of the house. They also had two exterior walls making it harder to keep the room warm with all that cold coming off two walls.

Our house had the opposite effect in the summer, the walls would feel hot, or extremely warm and the two rooms on the end of the house would be like a sauna.

It is important to note that our home is an all brick house with 2×4 walls. When the home was built in the 1950’s they assumed the brick would be enough of an insulator and the walls didn’t need any extra insulating. This was common in the 50’s.

After Insulating

It has been over two months since we insulated, and we have seen some of the coldest weather we have had in years.

I am happy to say that our house feels so much better! We have no cold drafty feeling, no cold radiating off the walls and the two rooms on the end of the house feel the same temperature as the rest of our house.

I used an Infrared Temperature gun to read the temperatures of the walls in my house. The outside walls rose about 10 degrees from what they were before we insulated. You can literally put your hand on the wall and feel the difference.

I would say the comfort level has very much improved in our house after insulating!

Gas Usage

You may be wondering why I am not going to tell you how much money I saved. There is two reasons for this, first I am on a budget for my gas bill so I pay the same every month and secondly my gas price went up slightly this year so I wouldn’t get an accurate comparison to last year.

Therefore, I am just going to go with the gas usage this year compared to last year.

My gas usage has gone DOWN since insulating!

I am comparing the last 60 days to the same time a year ago. The total usage for this time frame one year ago was 20.9 MCF and the same time frame this year was 15.4 MCF. That is a 26% decrease!!!!

I am extremely impressed with the results! Time will tell how much money I will be saving. My wife and I insulated our walls and house ourselves so the cost was low and we should be able to make the investment back quickly.

Conclusion

I would say that insulating our walls and attic made a huge improvement in the comfort level in our home and it also lowered our gas usage by 26%! It’s a win win!!

If you are able to do the insulating work yourself then the cost will be low enough for you to make your money back in 1-2 years and then the money your saving on your gas bill will be a bonus!

If nothing else I would say the improvement of the comfort of our house is enough reason to insulate! I am extremely happy with our decision to insulate our house.

If you have any questions about insulating your house leave me a comment or send me an email.