Why Some Homes Never Cool Down (It's Not What You Think)

If your house is way too hot, it may not just be the insulation that you have up in your attic. I want to introduce you to Ryan, one of our insulation nerds. Ryan's about 5 times smarter than me when it comes to building envelope, so listen up.

So here are the 5 reasons that your home could be hot and how you can fix them. So poor ventilation. So this is going to be a really big one. It's pretty specific to attics, but yeah, like you got to think that with your attic, it's the lid on your house, and if it's poorly sealed, you're You're gonna get a lot of heat transfer up into that space. Similarly, in the summertime, you have the sun beating down on the roof, which really creates a lot of radiating heat in that space. What the ventilation does is it creates air circulation. So you have soffits or somewhere down low to let air in. You have roof vents up high, and it creates air circulation so that the warm air in the attic is constantly being exchanged. That lowers the temperature in the attic, and that lowers the amount of radiating heat that can make it into the home. So ventilation really is gonna fix that for an attic. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, it is not going to fix it for maybe large windows or doors where you have the sun beating into the home, radiating heat in that sense. So keeping your curtains closed on a really hot day honestly can have a major effect on the temperature of your home. So number 2, the second thing we'll talk about will be air circulation throughout the home. So with this, we're speaking about your HVAC. So this is your air conditioning or your furnace and how that air is moving throughout the home. We're talking about hot homes right now, so we'll focus on the air conditioning side of that for those of us that are lucky enough to have it. When your air conditioner is Air into the home. So you can think of it as a closed box, and you're pumping a whole bunch of air into that box. Eventually that box is full, and there's nowhere else for the air to go. So in homes, what we do is we have what's called an air return. So it's a hole somewhere else that returns back to the furnace so that you have continuous circulation of air. This is really, really, really important. I can't even say the amount of times where I've gone into a home with an HVAC partner, and they've identified that the reason you're not getting enough air into your room is because you're not taking enough air out of it. And so it's really, really important to recognize that drying air out creates negative pressure. That negative pressure draws air in, and it's the air that you want that's cool coming from your air conditioner. Another quick thing to point out as well is that if you don't have an air conditioner, you know, naturally your house isn't going to have good air circulation because the furnace fan isn't going to engage automatically. In the wintertime, when you're furnace kicks on because the thermostat tells it to, it naturally would turn on the furnace fan, and that circulates air throughout the home. If you have air conditioning, the same thing happens when the home is too hot. But, you know, if you don't have an air conditioner and it's really hot in your home, there are ways to circulate air a little bit. Most houses will have a little switch in their mechanical room to run the furnace fan. So if you're noticing that there's big temperature gradients from floor to floor or room to room, try turning on that fan for a couple hours. It can really make a major difference on the overall effect of the house. All right, so the third thing that we'll talk about— All right, so the third thing we'll talk about is going to be air leaks and the importance of having an airtight home. This is something we talk about all the time in the winter. Super, super important in the wintertime, and although not quite as important in the summer, it still can have a pretty big effect on the comfortability of your home. So your vapor barrier is that layer of plastic that sits in front of your insulation. It is actually the physical barrier that separates indoor space from outdoor space. So, you know, if that barrier has a whole bunch of holes in it, that's going to allow the warm air outside to radiate into the house. It's going to allow the cool air inside to radiate out, and the result of that is your home is going to be warm. So not quite as important as like R-value or ventilation in the attic. This is nothing that we would usually recommend spray foam for, but air sealing can have an effect. On the comfortability of your home in the summer. So the 4th thing that we'll talk about is actually you're having issues with the insulation itself, and this can present in an array of different ways. So I'll focus on some of the more common things that we see. Again, going up into the attic space, one thing that we see is that perhaps you've had electricians and pot lights installed and you've had guys or girls working up there and they've compressed the insulation and it just looks like a mess. That can have a pretty negative effect on your home in the summertime because they have really lowered the insulation value of your insulation in your attic. And so now that bodyguard that's kind of standing between the hot attic and your, hopefully your cool home, has been compromised. Again, still in the attic, something else that we see quite often is called wind washing. And so what wind washing is, is if you have an area of soffits, so that's the overhang of your roof, and you have too much airflow come through, it can actually blow the insulation away from the exterior edge. So this causes full areas of ceilings to be completely exposed. This will show up as water. You'll see water in the, in the wintertime, or it'll show up as a very warm space in the summer. And so if you have maybe a bathroom that's really warm that sits on an exterior wall or a funny corner, maybe this is the problem. And it's honestly something that as a homeowner, you can go up and identify. You'll see that there's a bare area of ceiling with a whole bunch of insulation that's been blown away. You can have us come and fix it if you like, You can also just take a rake or a broom and go and push that insulation back. And yeah, that's all you need to do. And if you are thinking about raking your insulation yourself or doing any sort of DIY project, feel free to give us a call. Honestly, even if you're not going to use us for the work, we are motivated to make sure that you're educated and doing it properly. So the 5th thing that we're going to talk about is you've actually been misdiagnosed on what is happening in your home. And so this unfortunately is something that we do see. You know, we'll have an opinion on a fix and the homeowner will be presented with quotes that have a completely different opinion on it. And you know, sometimes there's more than one way to fix a problem, sometimes there's not. And so you have to be really careful and make sure that you're getting multiple quotes. Honestly, for me, I'm a 5-quote person. If I'm getting something done in my home that I know nothing about, I'm going to get 5 quotes. The reasoning for that is obviously price point. You want to make sure that you're getting a reasonable price point, but it's honestly more of that is scope of work. Because if I've got 4 companies that are all pretty closely aligned on what they want to do, and I got one that wants to do something different, maybe there's something wrong with the one, and maybe there's not. That one guy could be better than the other 4. It's really hard to say, but at least it gives you some information to do your own research and investigation on. Here at Beyond, honestly, we really pride ourselves in doing things right. That's why We offer like the workmanship warranty we do and the product warranties we do. If you're not happy with our install, we're the type of company that comes back and tries to fix it any way that we can. So just make sure that you're getting multiple quotes, you're double-checking any sort of diagnosis on what is happening or being recommended for you, and get multiple opinions and just make sure that you're trusting the professionals. And so once you get your 5 quotes, honestly, there's many ways that you can go about comparing. Comparing them. Obviously you can do it manually. One thing I've been doing a lot recently is actually utilizing AI for that. It's easy to punch in these 5 quotes, ask it for its opinion, and you know, these bots are getting smarter and smarter every day. They're not going to be a surefire tool, so make sure you're second-guessing anything that it's telling you. But honestly, these are really invaluable tools, and it can steer you in a way that honestly You wouldn't have unless you called a professional. We've seen people spend thousands of dollars and their house was still hot. And the reason for that is often because they had one piece of a system installed without looking at the entire system. So when we're looking again at specific to attics just being the most important part of your home for insulation in the summertime, you know, if you have your attic insulation done but don't address your ventilation, or your ventilation addressed and not your insulation, there's a good chance that the result is going to be less than optimal because you've only really repaired one part of that system. We pride ourselves at repairing the whole system in one go. So when our estimators come by, we're looking at ventilation, we're looking at insulation, we're looking at vapor barrier, we're looking at your humidity levels in the home, we're counting the number of roof vents in your roof, and we're doing all of that to try and make sure that the result is what you want.

So if your house is muy caliente, don't just try and cool it harder or suffer through it. Reach out. We can walk you through the process of actually making your house way more comfortable this summer. And if you like this video, I'm going to ask that you like and comment on it. Maybe give us even more tips on how you keep your house cool in those warm summer days.