If you plan to install recessed lights that are going to protrude in to your attic, make sure they’re airtight, IC-rated lights. Here’s what you can do to prevent problems: Having said all this, I don’t think recessed lights are truly ‘evil’, but they sure can cause a lot of problems, and there seems to be very little understanding of this in the building trades. All of these little holes in the housing are passageways for heated air to escape in to the attic they’re called attic bypasses. If you can see light pouring through on the attic side, it’s definitely not airtight. You can usually tell if a recessed light is airtight just by looking inside it if there are a bunch of holes inside the housing, it probably isn’t airtight. IC rated means that it’s safe to have insulation directly in contact with the light, but it’s not synonymous with airtight. The images above show how much heat is leaking through the insulation above an IC rated, airtight recessed light with a 65-watt incandescent bulb. The combination of minimal insulation and hot light fixtures shows up clear as day using an infrared camera. If an attic has fourteen inches of loose fill fiberglass insulation, how much insulation does that leave on top of the recessed light? Hang on, let me get my calculator…Īt any rate, there’s far less insulation above recessed lights than anywhere else in the attic, and these are the areas that get the hottest, so they should really have more insulation than anywhere else in the attic.

The main problem I find with recessed lights is that they’re not insulated well enough on a recent home inspection in Maple Grove, I found a home with forty-six recessed lights sticking up in to the attic, along with some wicked ice dams on the roof.Ī standard recessed light will stick up in to the attic about seven inches.

Until I started performing infrared inspections in attics, I never quite grasped how much heat recessed lights contributed to attics, but now my eyes are wide open. I love recessed lights, but even the best ones create a ridiculous amount of heat in attics, which can lead to ice dams.

Instaling Seal of Evil