Quick return on your investment and money long term
Financial advisors and bankers will discuss the returns on your investment and how much money you make if you invest properly and sometimes they are accurate and other times they miss the mark.

Reducing your monthly spend on energy has an immediate and very gratifying impact on your savings. By increasing the insulation in your attic you can immediately decrease the amount of money you spend heating & cooling your home and decrease the costs associated with repairing and replacing both your roof and your heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. The long-term payoff is HUGE! You could see your energy bills go down by as much as 15-25% depending on the climate and current levels of insulation.

Redding, Red Bluff and Chico have hot weather for long periods
If you look at the U.S. Climate Data website for the average temperatures in Redding, Chico, and Red Bluff it is clear that these three areas are some of the consistently hottest spots in the United States. Northern California has broken many temperature records in the past, and even recognized on television as being the hottest area in California! Back on June 25, 2006 Redding got as high as 117 degrees and in July 20, 1988 it was even hotter at 118 degrees. Not to be outdone, Red Bluff got up to 121 degrees back in August of 1981 and Chico consistently breaks 100 degrees in the Summer months. Which is why you will find many homes in the North State with swimming pools. However, once the temperature is consistently 105+, swimming pools are now heated up, and no longer refreshing. This drives people inside their homes, and jacking up the AC to cool down. Sometimes forcing them to run their AC all day and night, just to keep the house at a comfortable level. This can add up to some serious monthly energy bills.

PG&E pricing
Pacific Gas & Electric services most of the people in Northern California and trying to determine their rates can be as tricky as filling out several tax forms. If you go to their website and read about their various Rate plans, you may become overwhelmed with the various ways they can charge for use of the energy they produce. The one thing that is consistent among all options is that the cost of energy is increasing year over year and there seems to be no end insight on when the price increases will ever slow down, let alone become fixed.

REU pricing
If you are lucky enough to be able to purchase electricity from the City of Redding, then currently you are paying a fixed price per kilowatt of energy. Although their rates are substantially lower than PG&E’s rates, REU’s rates have consistently increased year over year for over a decade and all indications are that energy rates will continue to increase in the future. Several local leaders have come up with plans to try and reduce the potential inflation in REU’s future, to include building and operating a solar farm to subsidize the energy creation necessary to power the area. Even if these ideas are pursued, energy prices will have to increase substantially over time.

R-value meaning
There is a common term used with insulation, windows and window coverings called their R-value. The term R-value, refers to:

“An insulating material’s resistance to conductive heat flow is measured or rated in terms of its thermal resistance or R-value — the higher the R-value, the greater the insulating effectiveness.” – Energy.gov

The higher the R-value of material the better the material is at not allowing heat to move through it. If you increase the R-value of your attic insulation you are going to lower the amount of energy that can travel through your ceiling and into your roof. This means it takes less energy to both cool your home and less energy to heat your home. So in the hot summer months you will not need to run your air conditioning system for nearly as long or have to set the temperature as low in order to keep it comfortable. Conversely, in the cooler winter months, you will be able to heat your home using less energy and running your heater less often or burning less wood in your fireplace or wood stove. Simply put, the higher the R-value of the insulation in your attic the lower your monthly heating and cooling bills.

Increase the lifespan of your roof
Another great side effect of a high R-value in your attic is reducing the stress put on your roof. When you combine our Tugwell Roofing Owens Corning insulation with a proper roof venting system like the GAF Cobra Vented Ridge system, you lower the temperature changes in your attic and keep them more consistent with the outside temperatures. This reduces the stress on your roofing materials to include the underlayment and roofing shingles, which in turn, increases their lifespan. By having proper insulation in your attic you will increase the life of your roof and reduce the costs associated with continued roof maintenance and eventual roof replacement.

Increase lifespan on your HVAC system
You can think about your HVAC system similar to the way you think about your automobile. The less wear and tear you put on your vehicle, the longer it will last. We often measure the life of a vehicle by how many miles are on the odometer. This gives us a pretty good indication of how much further we can use the vehicle before we have to start completely re-hauling it by replacing parts, getting the engine and transmission rebuilt, etc. Yet it is not just the mileage that is put on the vehicle, but also how “hard” the vehicle was used. This is what your tachometer is used for, measuring the rotations per minute or RPMs to measure the “stress” you are putting the engine and transmission under.

Similarly with your HVAC system you can think of mileage like the number of hours your HVAC system can run, there is a limit and at some point the “life” of the HVAC system will be reached and it will need to be replaced. Likewise, thinking of the RPMs of your vehicle and how hard the HVAC system has to work to cool or heat your home and this can have a dramatic negative effect on the overall life of your HVAC. When your home is properly insulated, the temperature fluctuations in your home are reduced and this means you will have to run your HVAC system less often (think less mileage) and for shorter periods of time (think lower RPMs) to control the interior temperature of your home. These factors determine how long your HVAC system will work before you start spending money on repairs and eventually replace the entire system.

Whole-House Energy Assessment
To determine whether you should add insulation to your home, you first need to determine how much insulation you already have in you home, and where it is located. Our Tugwell Roofing insulation team are highly qualified home energy estimators, and they will include an insulation check as part of the whole-house energy assessment. This audit will help us identify the areas of your home that are in need, so that we can provide you a free estimate. At Tugwell Roofing we know how to build, protect, and maintain all roofing systems, gutters, and insulation to ensure maximum roof life-expectancy. Our team will make sure your installation is done right, the first time.

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