 Carl Peterson Energy Educator with North Dakota State University and today what we're going to be talking about is the effectiveness of insulation in our northern climates. The majority of our energy use in the house is through heating. So we're going to mainly focus on heating but also in the summer months where we think about cooling too but we'll focus on the heating aspects of it. But the idea is that the house is like a balloon here and to fill up this balloon to keep the air inside this balloon we have to make sure it's nice and air sealed. The same thing was with a house if we want to keep that heat in that house as long as possible we have to make sure it's nice and sealed up tight. The other thing is that eventually this air is going to leak out of this balloon same thing with a house. That heat can transfer through and out of a house in a number of ways it can go right through building components it can sneak through around gaps in those building components. It can also have convective currents in there where that air gets heated and cooled and the air moves inside the building components or right up against them like around a cold window or something like that. But the idea is so if we're going to insulate a house we have to make sure to do two things we have to make sure to insulate it properly but we also have to make sure to air seal it properly so that air doesn't leak out and bring that hot air with it or bring that heat with it. A couple different ways to do that is we take our insulation make sure to use our insulation properly but we also can use things like building wraps that we can wrap on the outside of our building to make sure that air doesn't pass through as long as it's a good quality air barrier material. We also want to look at the actual insulation. For example this insulation is rated as an R13 that R13 indicates the resistance to heat loss of this particular material. That R13 means though at a steady state it has to be at a constant temperature on inside and outside the way that's tested and it has to be at an even thickness. If we look at this mock of this wall cavity that we have here we can see that obviously there's some different things going on here. First of all we know that like I said heat can transfer right through building materials but that air can actually pass through these electrical boxes and into that wall cavity and get air currents moving in there if that insulations. In this installation over here they installed this energy block which keeps that that air from moving through there. In this other side here where it's not installed properly we've simply taken the fiberglass and smashed it in between there compressing that fiberglass reducing that R value for that fiberglass. It's not going to resist that heat loss as well. As we look at our rim joist we can see some other examples of where that heat can transfer out. Like I said heat can transfer right through building components and when we use an infrared camera we can really see where you can see each one of these rim joists or each one of these two by sixes or two by fours in the wall cavity every 16 inches on center you can see those with an infrared camera fairly fairly easily but if we insulate in between so we have for this example this is a two by four wall so we have an R13 R value in this wall over here we have spray foam insulation which is a higher insulation value and it also nice thing about this this air seals up it gets behind those electrical boxes so we don't have that air transfer through there. In the rim joist this is so this is an example of this is a basement wall this is the upstairs floors this is the rim joist area in between we want to make sure that not only is this insulated properly we want to make sure that it's also air sealed properly so that air doesn't get through there transferring heat but also in this condition in this situation it can transfer moisture and get back behind there and wrought out these areas. In an attic example we've got an recommended level of an R49 in an attic which is about 16 to 18 inches of insulation depends on the insulation type we want to make sure that we don't compress that insulation reducing that insulation value we want to make sure it's the full proper density for that insulation but we have to do first before that to make sure that insulation is going to work as effective as properly is install some other measures first we have to make sure to air seal it and here's an example of a can light this is a non IC rated can light which means I can't insulate around this I have to keep the insulation away so I lose that insulation value but also if you can see where this was installed there's a big air gap in there and that air that heats going to go along that ceiling inside of that house and it's going to leak up through here and right up to the attic and bring with it not only heat but also moisture and bring a moisture into the attic. We need to make sure to ventilate this attic so what we have here as we got these vents that come along from the soffit vents outside the edge of the house it brings the air up along the top of that insulation and out through our roof vents so we ventilate that attic so that hot air doesn't stay in there and create problems with ice stands and with this the way this vent is created here or installed here the air doesn't blow through the installation reducing the effectiveness the of this insulation so we get the full R value at that as long as it's installed properly.