What is Radiant Barrier Reflective Insulation?

Picking up where NASA left off, manufacturers began experimenting with different metals on a variety of polymer thin films.  The resulting materials came to be utilized in a variety of commercial products including emergency blankets protective clothing, firefighting and camping gear, cryogenic storage, particle colliders, MRI machines, and building insulation, to name a few. It's also widely used in packaging of perishable goods like snack foods and medicine to extend their shelf life. When you stop to think about it, it's hard to imagine our lives without it. It's a safe bet, there's some form of Reflective Insulation technology, in every house in America. Whether it's the insulation around your airducts, or the snack foods and candy packaging in your cupboards, Radiant Barrier has been proven effective over and again.

There are well-documented benefits to applying Radiant Barrier insulation into the attic envelope. These benefits are backed up by quite a bit of research by independent government funded labs including the prestigious Oak Ridge National Laboratory and The Florida Solar Energy Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Traditional insulations like fiberglass and foam insulation have purely conductive properties. These conductive insulations are given their R-Values determined by ASTM testing. The R-Value formulas describe insulation’s conductive resistance but ignore radiant heat transfer. Studies performed by the Florida Solar Project demonstrate that one thin layer of Radiant Barrier can be more effective blocking heat transfer in a building’s attic envelope than 6″ of fiberglass batting. These studies have become widely known in the reflective insulation industry and since been confirmed many times. A case study in Toronto by a large manufacturer of Radiant Barrier, demonstrated 18–20% savings on energy in the Winter and 46% in the Summer.