As energy prices keep rising throughout the Cary, NC area, we all need to find ways to improve our home’s energy efficiency. Having wood floors certainly helps your home stay clean and allergen-free. But did you know that you can also increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring?
Below are some ways to ensure you get the most out of your home’s energy use with hardwood floors. Minding these points, you can keep your bills low and your energy footprint as small as possible.
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Draft-Proof Your Wood Floors to Increase Your Home’s Energy Efficiency
Through draft-proofing alone, you can save a bundle in energy costs. In and around your home, you need to draft proof your doors, windows and chimneys. But to increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring, also check your skirting boards.
Start in one room of your house and follow the skirting boards around the perimeter, before moving onto another room. In these boards, look for gaps and fill those. Replace old skirting with new where needed. By doing so, you reduce heat loss and keep your feet warmer during a damp North Carolina winter.
Replacing all of the skirting boards in one average-sized home can cost several hundred dollars. But this simple fix saves you up to $40 in annual energy costs.
Fill Gaps in Your Wood Floors
If you have original hardwood floors, as many Triangle Area homes do, you probably have some gaps in them, too. Good wood flooring starts at the subfloor, where you need adequate insulation. Then on top of that subfloor, you need solid hardwoods free of gaps between planks or other holes. But many homes of yesteryear have no subflooring. Even worse, their hardwoods feature many gaps and holes.
If you have old hardwoods, call in hardwood refinishing experts to inspect these surfaces and assess their quality. Your best bet for old floors is either refinishing or placement of new hardwood flooring using modern products and techniques. If your newer flooring expanded or contracted and formed gaps or buckles, have the installers return to fix these issues. One way or the other, this attention to filling gaps in your hardwoods certainly helps in home energy efficiency.
After fixing these gaps and holes, you can increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring by another $40 to $60 in savings per year. You also greatly reduce the drafts that send a chill that starts at your toes and runs up your spine.
Increase Your Home’s Energy Efficiency with Wood Flooring…….Insulate, Insulate, Insulate!
By insulating beneath these surfaces, you significantly increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring. For a suspended wooden floor, this means lifting the floor and placing netting between joists to hold mineral wool insulation. But when laying a new floor, you simply ensure the installer places a layer of insulation over the subfloor.
There is an exception to insulation, when wanting to increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring. That is, when installing flooring at a second level above a heated room. In multi-story dwellings, take advantage of rising heat and let that warm air penetrate through the wood. When flooring a level above unheated spaces like garages, you need insulation to keep the cold from penetrating your higher levels.
Insulating can increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring by between $40 and $105 per year.
An Under-Floor Heating System Keeps You Cozy
A great way to keep your home cozy in the coldest of North Carolina winters is through installation of an under-floor heating system. This system helps reduce your heating bills by stopping the chill that starts at your toes.
Under-floor heating requires installation of the right type of wood flooring above it. So, you should turn to the experts for this installation. Your best option is engineered wood flooring that can handle extreme moisture and temperature changes. Using natural hardwoods over this heat leads to buckling, warping and cupping.
You cannot place a dollar value on the comfort you gain with under-floor heating. But you can expect to save another $50 to $90 per year through lower heating bills.
Your Cary, NC Experts in Hardwood Flooring
When you want to increase your home’s energy efficiency with wood flooring, turn to the experts of the Triangle Area, at Tri Point Flooring in Cary, NC. We provide an onsite inspection of your existing floors and a consultation for the best means of increasing your home’s value while nudging your energy costs down.
