Denver Attic Radiant Barrier

A radiant barrier overlays your insulation or gets stapled under your rafters. They are also sometimes installed in a crawl space.

A radiant barrier’s effectiveness is only as good as the installation, and it can be dangerous since the barrier conducts electricity. For safety and quality sake, you want to leave the task to the professionals. You can add a radiant barrier to an existing home, but installing one in a new construction is more manageable. The installer puts the radiant barrier between the rafters of a new building just before adding the roof sheath. In an existing home, the barrier is added by stapling the material to the rafters from inside the attic.

The “R” value of a radiant barrier varies based on the airspace around it and the direction in which the heat flows. However, ultimately the “R” value is irrelevant because it is installed over mass insulation. The energy savings from a radiant barrier comes from its ability to deflect heat.

A research study by the Heat Measurements Laboratory at the Michigan Institutes of Technology over 10 years found no significant change in the effectiveness of a radiant barrier.

Multiple field tests across the southern United States have found no significant increase in roof temperatures using a radiant barrier.

At Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Solar Energy Center performed extensive research in the lab setting and full-size buildings models. These studies found that radiant barriers did significantly resist the transfer of heat. Additional studies by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Mississippi found similar results. Northeastern Illinois University performed similar tests in the winter months in both residential and commercial buildings and again found significant resistance to heat transfer when compared with traditional insulation materials.

The Florida Solar Energy Center research found that even well-insulated homes could benefit significantly from the addition of a radiant barrier. However, the benefits are more significant in poorly or uninsulated homes.