Heating or cooling your house can be expensive. If you don’t have good insulation, your money could be leaking out of your walls. Rigid insulation is one great option to shore up your house’s thermal efficiency. There are many pros to rigid insulation that make it a great option.
Ease of Installation
You are still going to want a professional installation if it’s in the budget, but rigid insulation is far easier to install over its blown competition. In fact, it is simple enough for many do-it-yourself-ers.
Rigid insulation comes in sheets of varying thicknesses, which you can buy and cut to the ideal size. They are very light, largely consisting of gas, and can easily be moved and positioned as you wish. Installing the foam conceptually isn’t any more difficult than putting up a plywood wall. Also, because it is a sheet, you can nail or glue it in place and call it done.
This also makes it very easy to replace, if you ever need to. Just go out and buy a new sheet, pop it in place, nail it in, and patch the wall back up.
Another plus to rigid insulation is that it can be installed onto existing structures easily. For example, if you have a basement with concrete walls, as long as you choose the right type of rigid insulation, you can stick the panels straight to the concrete. Rigid insulation makes renovating your home quick and easy.
Lends Structural Support
Rigid foam is easy to build into load-bearing structures, and can even take some of the force itself [1]. The foam is firm enough that, when you build it into your walls, they gain a little bit more sturdiness and impact resistance. This is great if, for example, a child runs a little too fast and puts his or her knee through the wall. The foam should absorb much of the impact without damaging the wall on the other side – something that could be a costly fix.
Provides More Thermal Insulation
Blown insulation naturally fills in the gaps between joists, but doesn’t insulate the joists themselves. This means that a quarter of your wall’s surface is pumping in the outside temperature [2]. Rigid insulation is stiff enough that you can place it directly in front of your joists, meaning that there aren’t any thermal bridges into your home.
If you choose to, you can then blow foam into the gap between the rigid insulation.
Good Thermal Performance for the Price
Rigid insulation actually performs quite well when you look at energy loss. While you can lose some efficiency if you cut your board wrong, rigid insulation performs as well as blown loose fill insulation, despite only costing a little more than rolled insulation. Loose fill insulation frequently has an R-value of 3 or 4, while rigid insulation ranges from 4 to 8. Roll insulation, also known as batt insulation, often has an R-value of 3. [3]
Of course, its thermal performance is dependent on a decent installation.
Rigid insulation can be a great alternative to the more expensive blown insulation and the cheaper rolled insulation. It fills in the gap between high-end insulation and low-end, while at the same time filling a few niches that the other loose materials can’t. The next time you are building an extension onto your home, or insulating your attic of basement, you may want to consider rigid insulation to save you cash.
Sources:
1. http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/construction/panels.html
2. http://rehabadvisor.pathnet.org/sp.asp?id=10783
3. http://building.dow.com/na/en/applications/building/walls/rigid.htm
