Our walls are not that well insulated but since heat rises, if the heat/air inside my home does not have anywhere to escape, the outside air at least won't come in. That's why im going at extents of making sure i seal all openings and crevices in the attic and for the cellulose.
But yeah! Cant wait for summer too to check the differnece in AC usage... should i install a radiant barrier or no need? They are pretty inexpensive and it seems it can cut the attic temperatures by 30F or more
Regarding the baffle vents... I have them :) I got them from Lowes at a nice price... like 0.60 $ each ... cant remember how much i bought but it was like 35$ or so ... maybe less even
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Although heat rises, there's also a lot of heat that radiates downwards from the attic. Most Attics are giant ovens in the summer with all the sunshine, mine gets extremely warm. Hot air rises, that's true, but heat doesn't rise. Heat, like sunlight, radiates in all directions, it doesn't rise on its own at all (it requires a transport mode). That little difference will pay off huge in the summer, there will be a lot less heat coming in from the ceiling than before (from conduction).
Three types of heat transfer:
Conduction - materials touching transfer heat (wood touching insulation, also touching the interior ceiling). This is why attic insulation is so effective, it slows conduction (the R value rating)
Convection - typically air circulation. That's what people refer to when they say heat rises, they actually mean the air rises due to thermal expansion while cool air is simultaneously dropping inside your house due to thermal contraction.The air is not necessarily going in/out of the house. A leak free house will still have an interior convection cycle (even between window panes you can see convection).
Radiation - beams of energy that transfer heat on contact (solar is the most common), but you can also see radiant energy with thermal cameras.
Radiant barriers are for certain specific situations. They work extremely well in poorly insulated spaces...since there's a lot of problems. For the effort involved in installing it at this point, I would skip it. You won't see much in gains, due to your excellent insulation doing so much.
One last caution, check the attic in the next cold snap for moisture (frost). Make sure your baffles didn't accidentally get covered/blocked. Now that you have less heat going into your attic, the house isn't drying the attic out as much. Its fine if you have proper seals, there shouldn't be moisture anyhow, but a quick check takes 2-3 minutes. High heat loss promotes air circulation in the attic, low heat loss (well insulated) means low convection rates. In some older homes, the poor insulation was a design feature :( I need to install continuous soffit vents in my house, the solution to low convection is to increase the amount of inlets/outlets.
No one likes the follow up step, since the project is 95% done who wants to do the final inspection 3 months later?