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Adequately insulating and air sealing the access to an attic— especially to unconditioned attics—will help lower your heating and cooling bills.

Properly insulating and air sealing your attic will help reduce your energy bills. Attics are often one of the easiest places in a house to insulate, especially if you'd like to add insulation.

When insulating your home, you can choose from many types of insulation. To choose the best type of insulation, you should first determine the following:

• Where you want or need to install/add insulation
• The recommended R-values for areas you want to insulate

For energy efficiency, your home should be properly insulated from the roof down to its foundation. This includes the following areas:

Your state and local building codes probably include minimum insulation requirements, but to build an energy-efficient home, you may need or want to exceed them. For maximum energy efficiency, you should also consider the interaction between the insulation and other building components. This is called the whole-house systems design approach.

Use the equation below to estimate the cost effectiveness of adding insulation in terms of the "years to payback" for savings in heating costs. Years to payback is the time required for the insulation to save enough fuel from heating (at present prices) to pay for itself. A simple payback is the initial investment divided by annual savings after taxes.

Unless your home was specially constructed for energy efficiency, you can usually reduce your energy bills by adding more insulation. Many older homes have less insulation than homes built today, but adding insulation to a newer home may also pay for itself within a few years.

An R-value indicates an insulation's resistance to heat flow. The higher the R-value, the greater the insulating effectiveness.