R-Value: The R Rating On Your Iowa Home

Understanding R-Value Rating In The Attic

Knowing what your house needs when it comes to an R-Value rating can be confusing as a homeowner. Your heating and cooling system, appliances, lightbulbs, air leaks, and insulation can affect how your home is behaving and how much you’re paying to keep it all running. When looking to improve the comfort of your home, we look at a term called R-Value. The R-Value is a way to measure how much insulation needs to be installed. The higher the R-Value, the more resistant the material is to heat transfer for any given thickness. To figure out the full details on how to achieve the R-Value for your home, keep reading below.

Think of R-Value like a large winter coat. Winter coats do not actually make you warmer on their own, but rather they trap the body heat that you produce and make it harder for it to escape. Your body heat will simply disperse into the cold air without this additional obstacle.

R-Value Rating Insulation

Each region has an ideal R-Value that a home’s attic should achieve but in reality, many homes are built with the bare minimum. Here in Iowa, a home R-Value should be anywhere in the range of R38 to R60. Being in a more cold climate, homes struggle to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Having an R-value rating of R60 is ideal to fully know you are receiving the ideal home comfort.

Instead of throwing insulation down and guessing that it will be enough, we use R-value to measure. As said before, the higher the R-value, the greater the insulating effectiveness. It depends on the temperature, aging, and moisture accumulation which is why it is important to have a reputable contractor take a look at your attic insulation.