PLEASANTON — Attic insulation is a key component of an energy-efficient home. By keeping hot and cold outside air from entering the home, a well-insulated attic can go a long way toward minimizing your heating and air conditioning bills. However, simply having attic insulation isn’t enough—you also need an adequate amount of it. Otherwise, you won’t achieve the optimum level of energy-efficient performance.
Fortunately, it’s easy to determine whether you have enough attic insulation—all you really need is a tape measure. Simply stick your tape measure down into your insulation and measure its thickness. The minimum recommended level of attic insulation is R38, which is between 13 and 14 inches thick. So, if your attic insulation is at least 13 inches thick, you’re all right. If it’s less than that, you might want to consider adding some more to maximize your home’s energy efficiency.

How to Measure Attic Insulation

Learn how to measure attic insulation levels to enhance your home's energy efficiency. Get expert tips and step-by-step guidance.

How to Measure Attic Insulation by Kevin Comerford

By Kevin Comerford of Service Champions

5 Steps to Prepare Your HVAC System for Winter

Video: 5 Ways to Prepare Your HVAC System for Winter


As winter draws near, you'll want to make sure your HVAC system is equipped for optimal performance. Today we're in Pleasanton with diamond certified expert contributor Kevin Comerford of Service Champions to learn more. Hello, these are the five things a homeowner can do in order to get their heating and air conditioning system prepared for the cold of winter. The first item is changing your filter. Your system has probably been running all summer long and operating pretty intensely throughout the heat of summer. Now that you're transitioning to winter time, it's time to take a look and see if your filter needs to be changed. The dirt that gets sucked into your furnace and air conditioning system often times is the number one thing that caused these to break down. Having a dirty filter also makes your system a lot more inefficient. 

The second thing a homeowner can do to prepare their system for winter is make sure that you turn your furnace on at least three times while it's still mild outside. The last thing you want is to turn your furnace on for the first time when it's really, really cold and see that it doesn't operate or is not working. A lot of times these furnaces, because they haven't been used a lot, will have things going on inside of them like a squirrel can get down into the flue pipe or there's a lot of different things that can cause your furnace to not operate properly. You want to find that out early in the season while it's still mild before it gets cold. 

The third thing a homeowner can do is a visual inspection around the furnace. That means your furnace may be located in the garage, it may be in a closet, or it may be up in the attic. Now the attic may be a little bit more difficult to get to because you've got to climb up on a ladder so we don't recommend that necessarily. But certainly if your furnace is inside your garage or in a closet, make sure that anything that could be stored around the furnace is removed. We don't want anything to be draped over the furnace or anything laying around it because that could be a fire hazard. Also, these furnaces need to breathe, and if there's a lot of stuff that's on top of them, it'll cause them to break down and they won't operate properly. 

The fourth thing a homeowner can do to prepare their heating and air conditioning system for the winter is to make sure that you have a programmable thermostat and make sure the program is actually working. What that means is, you can program your thermostat if you want it to come on in the morning about 30 minutes before you wake up so that your home is nice and warm when you wake up. You also can have it programmed to shut off when you leave in the morning and then come back on 30 minutes before you arrive and then shut off at night. If you like it cool in the evening, there's all these different features that are available on a programmable thermostat so make sure you read your manual or call a service provider who certainly can help you get that set up. 

The fifth and final thing a homeowner can do to prepare their heating system for the wintertime is make sure that you have regular maintenance done at least one time per year. The furnace emits carbon monoxide, it also has natural gas that's used to power it. These are two volatile elements that we don't recommend most homeowners even mess around with. These things have your furnace has a flame inside of it, you want to have that looked at every year by a service provider to make sure that it's operating safely. Make sure that it's clean because the cleaning of the unit will also make sure that it runs properly in a super efficient thank you very much. 

To learn more from local top rated companies visit our diamond certified expert reports at experts diamond certified org. 

Video: Measuring Attic Insulation

 Due to the important role that attic insulation plays at home energy efficiency, it's important to make sure that you have an adequate amount today. We're in Pleasanton with diamond certified expert contributor, Kevin, come record of service champions, to learn more. Another tip that homeowners can do in order to make sure their heating and air conditioning system is operating properly is ensure that they have the right levels of insulation in their home. Right here, you could see that I have a stick. It's called a tube. You lies err in fact, and this helps me determine how thick is this, this pink insulation in an attic in the, in the particular attic that I'm in. You can see that we want and our company recommends the minimum be our 38, which here you could see is just between 13 and 14 inches of insulation inside your attic. So you could stick a measuring tape down into your insulation and make sure that you've got that r38 level. Again, 13 to 14 inches is the minimum that you want.

To learn more from local top-rated companies, visit our diamond certified expert reports at experts. diamond certified. org. 

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