Most UK homeowners understand having good quality insulation is important in the winter months to help prevent heat from escaping through the floors, walls, and roof.
However, some people don’t realise that insulation is also crucial for the summer months too, to stop your home from overheating in the hotter weather.
It’s also a crucial element in making your home more energy efficient, allowing you to save money on your energy bills in the long run.
How insulation in works in the summer
The main job of insulation is to protect your home from both hot and cold weather. While in the winter insulation prevents heat from being lost, some homeowners believe that installing insulation will make their home too hot in the summer.
This is simply untrue, and the likes of multi foil insulation are reflective meaning that any direct sunlight or heat that hits the affected areas, like walls or the roof, will bounce away rather than the heat transferring from outside to in.
The benefit of this is that it prevents your home and individual rooms from overheating and becoming uncomfortable in particularly warm weather.
Lowering energy bills
Without installing the relevant insulation, you may need to run some high powered cool down products, such as electric fans or dehumidifiers, to bring your home temperature down. This will, in turn, increase your energy bills too.
Insulation can also help you reduce your carbon footprint by preventing the need for plug in fans and electrical devices to cool your home down, making your property more energy efficient.
Additional steps to take to keep your home cool in summer
There are also extra things you can do to help keep your home at a comfortably cool temperature during really hot weather, including:
1. Add extra roof and loft insulation if needed to reduce heat transfer from the roof.
2. Close your curtains in the mid-afternoon to stop direct sunlight from blazing into your home.
3. Open windows and doors to allow cool air to breeze through the home.
4. Plant trees in your garden to provide extra summer shade.
5. Cook food on an outdoor BBQ on extremely hot days to reduce the heat indoors.
How to check your existing insulation in the summer
If you’re unsure whether your home has adequate, or any, insulation currently in place, you can follow our guide on how to inspect the existing insulation in your home.
The first place to check will probably be the loft area, and you’ll likely find that the loft is warmer than the rest of the house if there is effective insulation in place, as it’ll be preventing the heat from travelling down through your home.
If the loft is cool even when the weather is warm outside, you may want to check your floor insulation as the heat may be travelling through when you don’t want it to.
Checking your wall insulation is a bit more tricky, and should probably be done by a professional when any electrical wires or sockets are in the surrounding area.
Walls are particularly important if you live in a terraced house, as heat can easily transfer through the walls from home to home. Installing wall insulation can prevent heat from your neighbour’s house from warming yours up when you don’t want it to.
