How to Save Money When Buying Aluminum reflective foil

Does radiant barrier work?

The question is not, "Does radiant barrier work?"

It’s a proven technology; yes, it works! NASA uses it, Frito-Lay uses it in their chip bags, and anyone who has ever used a sun shield for their car windshield knows that radiant barrier foil insulation works to reflect heat.

So the real question is: How much can I save and is it worth the investment?

We will be the first to admit if you search the Internet, or only believe a salesman’s pitch, the benefits of radiant barrier are often way oversold.

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We have said before that you can expect realistic savings of 5 – 20% with some homes getting 30% or more.

Additionally, beyond just saving energy, a huge benefit of radiant barrier is the comfort is provides. By reducing the radiant heat gain, your home will be more comfortable and it will feel cooler. Often customers will raise their thermostats a couple of degrees to keep from getting too cold!

Remember radiant barrier installed in an attic will only reduce the heat entering from the roof, but there are still walls that can/will bring heat inside if they are catching direct sunlight.

Allow us to illustrate two different scenarios of homes and the related savings. The basic rule is that the more roof you have, the more room you have for potential savings.

Example House #1
Single story
2,000 square feet
Ranch-style home

If the house is 50′ x 40′ with 8′ ceilings, it has 16,000 cubic feet of space, 1,440 sq ft of wall surface and 2,000 sq ft of roof surface.

So the roof area (2,000 sq ft) divided by the total surface area of the home (3,440 sq ft) is 58% of the total thermal envelope (i.e. the space being heated and cooled). Since the roof represents such a high percentage of the thermal envelope it can have a very large impact on savings. In fact, there have been cases where people have reduced their summer bills more than 30% on very large one-story homes. As a one-story home gets larger, the percentage of roof to wall ratio increases. Some homes, (those greater than 4,000 sq ft) can have a roof/ceiling ratio represent over 75% of the thermal envelope.

Example House #2
Two story
2,000 square feet
Layer-style home

If the house is 40′ x 25′ and 8′ ceilings plus 2′ between floors (total 18′ tall), you have a total of 18,000 cubic ft. The wall surface is 2,340 sq ft and the roof surface area is 1,000 sq ft.

Once again, take the roof area (1,000 sq ft) divided by the total surface of the home (3,340 sq ft) and the percentage the roof represents is only 29% of the total thermal envelope. Installing radiant barrier in a home like this will still be beneficial. However, the percentage of savings will be significantly less compared to the total percentage on the one-story home listed above.

On the flip side, the cost for the two-story home will be half the amount compared to the single story home since it would only use 1,000 sq ft of foil.

Hopefully, this helps to explain why the percentage savings on the bills can vary greatly. You can also take a look at this article: Are energy improvements worth my investment? Without going through and doing a complete heat load analysis it is difficult to really project the savings. Just remember, the more roof, the more potential for savings. We would still recommend installing it on a two-story home with a small attic because it will still work to reduce heat gain into the home. Additionally, it would also be a good idea to plant trees to provide shade to the east and west walls too.

Foil insulation should be part of an overall strategy to make your home more comfortable and energy efficient. For most homes you should:

air seal the home
seal the duct work
install a radiant barrier
have A/C system checked and cleaned
increase attic ventilation
add more attic insulation

Bottom line: We have thousands of customers who have installed AtticFoil™ themselves; and a great number of our new customers are referrals from existing customers. Radiant barrier does work. Just be realistic in your expectations and don’t believe anyone that can guarantee savings of 30 – 50%.

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Maintaining a comfortable interior climate in a home is a daunting task. This is especially true if you live in a part of the world that has weather extremes. For example, talk to a person who lives in the high desert of California or just about anyone in the Southwest and they will tell you how hot it can get on numerous summer days. Afternoon air temperatures above 100F are common. Attic air temperatures can soar to 145F or greater. If you want the inside of your home to be 78-80F, air conditioners can work long and hard to maintain the comfort zone you select at the thermostat. The same scenario is true in places that experience bitter cold temperatures for months on end.

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When an object such as the sun, your furnace or boiler creates heat, it can radiate this energy in the form of infrared (IR) electromagnetic energy waves. This IR energy travels through space and in and around the inside of your home at the speed of light. The waves themselves are invisible and carry no heat, but when they strike a surface the energy begins to vibrate the molecules of the object. Those vibrations create friction which in turn creates the heat we feel when sunlight strikes our skin or when we touch an object that is warm or hot.

It stands to reason that if you intercept these IR waves with some type of barrier and simply bounce them back to where they originated, that the heat would not be transferred. An effective radiant barrier would indeed make your house much cooler as you reflected the heat back outdoors. This same radiant barrier would reflect the IR heat your furnace creates right back into your home.

This technology has been around for a very long time. Surely you have seen a cook wrap a hot dish with aluminum foil to keep the contents warm. Older thermos bottles have highly reflective coatings that keep liquids warm or cold. Firefighters use custom metallic foil suits to keep them cool. Our astronauts in space have special suits that have 17 layers of reflective material that keep them comfortable from extreme heat and cold at the same time. Radiant barrier materials work and they work well. The trick is making them work in a typical home.

The best radiant barrier products are the ones that have the highest amount of reflectivity. It only makes sense as they directly reflect more of the IR waves away. Anything that dulls the surface of the radiant barrier film significantly reduces its reflectivity. Many traditional radiant barriers for homes are foil laminates that can be stapled up in an attic or even laid flat on top of insulation. These offer only one layer of protection. They work well until they become covered with dust. As the dust builds up, their effectiveness goes down.

Two years ago, I had special radiant barrier chips installed in my attic. There are hundreds of thousands of randomly overlapping highly reflective foil pieces that bounce heat back to its source. In many places the chips may be ten or fifteen layers thick. I am not concerned with a dust buildup. The exposed layers I can see may get dusty, but just below are several layers that will always reflect the heat back to its source.

Those who build new homes have several additional options. Roof sheathing attached to roof trusses is available with built-in radiant foil on the underside. It would take years for that surface to become dust covered. You or your builder can buy drywall that has foil facing on the backside. This drywall can be used in all rooms that have walls or ceilings that are exposed to the elements. Of course, once the final attic insulation is installed, the radiant barrier chips I used can be installed to give the highest level of protection.

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