It’s easy for most homeowners to measure the temperature in their homes at any given time: the thermostat mounted on the wall will give you a reading at a glance and let you know if you should turn the heat up or down, based on your preferences. But what you might not realize about that thermostat is that the reading it’s giving you might not be an encompassing one in regards to your entire home.
Heat loss is always occurring in your home—even with the best home insulation in West Lorne, ON protecting you. Why? Because heat transference—a form of energy transference—is an ever-occurring process. Specifically, in your home, heat loss is constantly occurring in three forms: conduction, convection and radiation. And, despite what your thermostat might be telling you, depending on where you’re standing in your home, you might be feeling the effects of one of these types of heat loss!
Understanding heat loss
It might sound like a lesson out of high school science when the terms conduction, convection and radiation come up, but it’s important to discern what makes each of these different types of heat transference different in order to mitigate them in your home:
- Conduction: This occurs when heat moves across a material from warmer to colder across a solid plane, in an attempt to bring the entire object to the same temperature. In your home, this would be represented as heat escaping through the solid wall and insulation between them.
- Convection: Convection is a form of heat transference that occurs via heat circulation and the energy loss that occurs during circulation—typically occurring within a gaseous medium (like the air). In your home, convective heat loss usually occurs when you leave a window open or open a door, allowing heat to quickly escape as it moves from warmer to colder.
- Radiation: Radiated heat loss occurs as the producer of heat itself is releasing heat, thus expending itself. Think of this like when you light a fire in your fireplace—heat radiates off of this to the room, eventually expending the fire.
As you can see, each form of heat loss is different and requires a different way to stem the reaction. Though we can’t prevent heat transference and heat loss, we can definitely slow it down with the right tools!
The power of insulation
Because conductive heat loss is perhaps the most common form of heat loss in a home—due to the fact that you’re surrounded by four walls and a roof that heat must pass through—the first line of defense is absolutely good home insulation in West Lorne, ON.
If you haven’t recently or ever had a professional insulation contractor inspect your home and heat map it for potential areas of heat loss, consider doing so today. You could effectively stem the heat loss your home is experiencing via conductive heat loss (and other forms of heat loss), to better control the temperature of your home via the forced air it produces.
If you want the number on your thermostat to truly be indicative of the temperature in your home, you owe it to yourself to see if your home is properly stopping heat transference and, by effect, heat loss!