Insulation Matters During the Summer, Too! with Larson Home Services

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight oh five thirteen ten Wiba. The tide is high
because it's humid today or it's been humid, that's for sure.
I love this song, love this jam. And another guy
I love talking to is our good friend Andrew Larson.
Of course, Andrew comes to us from Larsen Home Services.
The website Larsenhome Services dot com. That's spelled l A
R s O N Home Services dot Com. Telephone number

(00:23):
six oh eight five three five forty three forty three
at six oh eight five three five forty three forty
three as mentioned. Joining us this morning is Andrew Larson. Andrew,
how are you doing this week?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well? Do I ever say I'm doing bad?

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I've never known you that is, Well, you've got kids,
so yeah, you got.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
You never know? Yeah, you never know, right.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
You never yeah, exactly, you never know what you're waking
up to each each morning. Well, it's great to talk
with you, and uh, Andrew. We're going to talk about insulation.
And I think a lot of folks often think insulation
and winter, but we're talking installation in summer for really
good reasons, aren't we.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
We are you know, insulation insulation. The advertisements start coming
out more in the fall, and all the companies are
pushing it, and you know, and it makes sense. You know, insulation.
It's cold outside, this warm, fuzzy some cases, itchy blanket
wrapped around you, and nobody talks about it in the summer.

(01:25):
But what we know from our years of experience and
the thousands of insulation jobs that we've done and just
sheer home building science, is that insulation is actually more
important in the summer when it's hot than it is
in the winter, which is insane to a lot of people.
They don't it's hard to grasp. But insulation is rated

(01:50):
on in our value and where we live, in our
region it is. It's really recommended to have an our
value of insulation. And what our values see aands for
is the measure of how well or how slow I
should say, the transfer of heat is allowed to happen.

(02:11):
So the faster heat can transfer through the insulation, the
lower our value it's going to have. And we build
the our value up by putting more inches of insulation
in a space like an attic. And we all know
that well, So we got to talk about No, I
could get real scientific, I don't. I don't want to

(02:33):
get all nerdy but it's actually a funny story. I
was at school with a school with my daughter about
a year ago. She had to go in and do
a makeup makeup science lab and they were studying the
three ways of heat transfer, conduction, convection, and radiation. And
the teacher started talking about that and I was like,

(02:53):
that's cool, and he goes, nobody's ever said that before.
I was like, no, it's super cool. So then we
started talking about insulation. I said, we deal with every
I said, we deal with conduction, convection, and radiation every day.
And he's like, you still remember it from middle school.
I was like, no, I don't. I learned it when
I got older. I don't remember it. But anyway, what

(03:15):
happens in the summer is if anybody's ever stuck their
head up in the attic of their home in the summer,
it's one hundred and thirty one hundred and forty degrees, yes,
you know, we have ventilation from the sofa to the
top of the roof. It's meant to cool your roof.
It it really doesn't matter. When it's this hot, it's
going to be extremely hot in that attic. And what

(03:37):
happens is that if we don't have the correct OUR value,
which where we live it's recommended to have anywhere from
an R forty nine to an R sixty. We don't
do anything less than an OUR sixty because just why not.
I mean, it's just it doesn't make sense to skimp on,
you know, a few inches of insulation, so in our sixty.

(03:58):
So what it's doing is it's stopping that one hundred
and forty degree attic. It's slowing the transfer of that heat.
Because I'd say, just the other day, one of my
reps was doing an estimate in a house and the
home owners like, yeah, he's like, are upstairs it gets
so hot, like we can barely use it in the summer,
And they had AC, but it couldn't keep up. They

(04:19):
set the AC at seventy two at night to sleep,
and those rooms upstairs were like seventy eight seventy nine degrees. Well,
they only had three inches of insulation in their attic,
which is roughly like a R two. I mean it
was super old and tore up so almost nothing. So
that ceiling up in their attic was like a radiant heater.

(04:44):
So that room they're trying to cool the seventy two degrees.
We hit the thermal imager. This is midday, so it's hot,
but we hit the ceiling with the thermal imager and
the ceiling was like ninety six degrees. Well, how's that
gonna work. It's never gonna work. You're never gonna cool
that room down. So if they had adequate insulation up there,

(05:06):
that just slowed that you've got. Now you've got seventeen
inches of beautiful I think, beautiful sewn, beautiful insulation separating
your drywall ceiling from the super super super hot attic.
And once we put that in there, that ceiling is
going to get back down to the tempt that we're

(05:28):
that we're looking to keep the room at. So, but
in the winter it doesn't work the same way because
in the winter we're heating the house, the heat rises,
You've already got a barrier of insulation up there. So,
because the difference between a convection or conduction heat loss,
which is what happens in the winter when we lose

(05:50):
our heat and radiant radiant slower, So like once all
that insulation heats up and your ceiling heats up, it's
really hard to cool it down. So we're it's a
slower process in the summer, but we need the insulation
to stop it. Now. In the winter, it's much more
important to have proper air ceiling, so we're keeping that

(06:10):
heat in the house and not letting it through stack
effect go out. So we try to educate people and
on the importance of it in the summer, because in
the summer our insulation slows way down. It's just nobody
thinks about it, but it's it's it's much more important

(06:31):
in the summer than it is in the winter. It's
pretty our insallation work in the winter.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's and it's it's when you talk about that, it's
pretty amazing. I think that, and I get it. A
lot of us, you know, school was a long time ago,
and we tend to forget some of these things. And
it's pretty amazing to me when we when we think
about this stuff. A lot of this these concepts are
are really nothing. I was reading a story the other
day about I think it's called like the Caveman Method

(06:59):
for keeping your house cool. I saw a couple of
publications actually talking about it, and it was yeah, and
they're they're they're talking about really the Caveman method for
keeping your your house cool is is really sealing it in,
sealing it off from the eat kind of like a
cave keeps cool as much as you can do, like
you know, blinds and insulation and all that stuff. And Andrew,
when we talk about about these about these ways to

(07:21):
keep your house cool, there's there's obviously significant benefits. One,
your house is more comfortable. You mentioned you know, people
with especially upper spaces that tend to get tend never
to never to get fully cool. All that stuff that
comforts important. Keeping energy bills is low and important. But also,
and I don't know if it's ever been studied, and
you would know, is the idea of like your your

(07:43):
central air kicking in and turning off and turning back
on again. I can't imagine what that does to that system.
And you think about longevity and cost and efficiency, the
more you can reduce as far as overall taxing burden,
especially that on and off on those systems, it's really
going to prolong the life of those of those things,
which I don't know, I haven't had, thank goodness, knock

(08:04):
on wood, haven't had to replace a central air conditioning
unit or a furnace. I'm gonna guess those things aren't cheap.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
And if you can put that it can be as
much as a new roof. Yeah, really expensive. Yeah, so
depending on how bigger house is, yeah, they can cost
as much as a roof. So yeah, we want we
want to cut down on that on off, on on
on off of all of our ace h VAC units.
But again, just remember we've got to look at the

(08:35):
way we lose and gain heat. In the summer, we're
trying to keep the heat from coming in and in
the winter we're trying to keep the heat from going out.
And it's two totally different processes and there's different materials
that work better for each instance. And with Larsen and
Larson Kenny Home Services, years of doing insulation and we

(08:59):
came up with the Ultimate Addict solution and it addresses
all types of weather in all seasons. There is absolutely
no better way to fix your addict than an Ultimate
Addict solution. It's a one and done. It is the
best way to air seal your addict. It is we

(09:19):
make sure to hit all of the critical details. Just
like a roof, We've got different things we need to
flash in your attic because there's different things mechanical pipes
that get hot, they have to be flashed properly, they
have to use metal on them. Some of them we
have to use different types of insulation that are one
hundred percent fire rated. We have to use fire cock.

(09:41):
So there's critical details that need to be taken care of.
But within the Ultimate Addic solution, it encompasses that entire attic,
and I mean, honestly, it's a travesty that once we
get done with the work, we pretty much seal the
attic off and nobody ever needs to go up there,
you know, unless you need a little storage. There's Ultimate
Addic solutions we can you that have storage platforms right

(10:04):
right next to the scuttle holes, so you can kind
of pop the popular you're at scuttle cover off and
you can keep stuff up there. So there's different ways
for us to do that, so it's not completely unusable.
But once we're done with your addic, it's done the
best way that it can be done. There is no
better way that it can be done.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
And the great thing about working with you guys, Andrew
and the team at Lars Home Services, you can come
out and take a look and give people a full
assessment on this, and of course it make that decision.
And I know there's a lot of folks right now
going how can I talk to Andrew? How can I
pick up the phone? What do what's the phone number?
I'll give the phone number because it's six of eight
five three five forty three forty three. That's five three

(10:44):
five forty three forty three. People love hearing this stuff
and they love talking and working with you, Andrew, and
it's a great day to do that. As you mentioned,
you know the type of work that you guys do
when it comes to insulation, when it comes to really
sealing off, that's healing, keeping that high out and that
cold air in and vice versa in the winter months.
What an amazing solution it is with Larsen Home Services.

(11:06):
Great day to give Andrew and the team a call.
Six O eight five three five forty three forty three.
That's six oh eight five three five four three four three.
More information online Larsenhomeservices dot com. That's l A R.
S O N Home Services dot com. Andrew, It's always informative,
always great chatting with you, my friend. You enjoyed this
fantastic day and we'll talk again in a week.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
See you next week and.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Again that website Larsenhomeservices dot com. Kevin ham Haamsarbacare He
comes your way next right here on thirteen ten w
I b i