Video: A Simple Way to Reduce Attic Temperature

CAMPBELL — Host, Sarah Rutan: If your home tends to retain heat during the summer, there’s a simple, low-cost measure you can take to cool things down. Today we’re in Campbell with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Jim Humphrey of JH Construction to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Jim Humphrey: Any tip that I might have for homeowners, nowadays, is everybody knows how important green building is now and there’s a product that I like out there; it’s called Low-E. It basically reduces your carbon footprint.

If you can imagine a piece of tin foil on both sides of a piece of foam that’s about three-sixteenths of an inch, and you take this stuff and you staple it to the bottoms of your rafters, leaving about three inches at the top of the ridge line and three inches from the bottom to let it breathe.

And, basically, how it works is the radiation that’s coming in it reflects it back so that it’s not radiating into the house, and you can actually put your hand on it and you can feel the heat, but when you take your hand away from it, you can’t feel the heat anymore, and it will reduce your attic probably 25 – 35 degrees in temperature even at the heat point of the day.

And, I had a customer come back to me two-and-a-half years after I did it at his place and he says, “You know, Jim, one of the best things you ever recommended that I do was to do this. That stuff really works. My energy bill is really down.”

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top-rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.