Attic Insulation | Installation, Removal and Replacement

Critical Mistakes to Avoid When Insulating Your Attic Space

today I’m going to discuss with you what I feel you need to know before insulating your attic.
Insulating your attic will improve air quality. It will improve efficiency and also make your house more comfortable. So you wanna make sure you do it right. Stay tuned.

Okay, first of all this is staggering. Did you know that the Department of Energy says that a properly insulated attic could improve or save you between ten to fifty percent of your heating bills every year? Is that not nuts?

That means that most people have a very, very uninsulated attic. And we’ve seen this time and time again. We’ll go into an attic and there’ll be that much insulation, and you know they’re walking around in hoodies and all that kind of stuff.

So what we wanna do is we wanna give you some tips that you should think about before even insulating the attic and also explain to you some of the different methodologies in insulating your attic.

Step 1: Air Sealing Before Adding Insulation

Number one, make sure that if you’re going to go through all the expense of insulating your attic, air seal all the major penetrations in the attic floor. This is all of the heating and air duct penetrations, all of the exhaust vent fan penetrations.

If you’ve got a water heater, then it’s got, you know, the piping going up through the attic. You’re gonna need to get some fireproof caulk, and build a dam around that to make sure that the insulation doesn’t burn.

You wanna make sure all that is done properly. You wanna make sure that you’re air sealing all of those chases and your attic hatches.

And if you’ve got one of those big monster fans that’s in your hallway that they’ve installed back in the seventies and eighties to ventilate the house, I recommend you just yank that dude out and seal all that guy up and air seal it properly and redo that drywall. And that should take care of most of the air loss from your living space up into your attic.

Step 2: Fix Roof Leaks Before Insulation Work

Okay, so this should go without saying but obviously you want to make sure that you take care of all roof leaks. Now believe it or not not everybody thinks about that.

If you get up there and you see matted insulation or insulation that may look like it might have debris or different things like that, you could be getting water from the roof leaking or from your gable vent.

Whenever we did our attic we had two gables. Obviously it was a shotgun style attic, so you had two gables. Well one side, one gable, was taking on all this blowing rain.

So when we got up there to suck out all that old insulation so that we could air seal the floor of the attic, we discovered there was mold all over the drywall. It was a great place for snakes to get in and different things like that.

So you wanna make sure you air seal those gables if you find out that they’re letting water come in because you don’t wanna blow in insulation or put batting down only for that insulation to get wet and ruined in the future.

Step 3: Ensure Proper Attic Ventilation

Another big mistake that we see people not doing—matter of fact, we’ve had quite a few people call us that they had developed a mold problem after they hired a contractor to blow in insulation—because they didn’t make sure the attic was properly ventilated.

So there’s two types of ventilation. There’s active and passive.

That way during the convection process when the attic gets really hot, it starts to move air from the soffit up through the ridge vent. The only problem is they didn’t put baffles in to make sure that those soffits didn’t get clogged.

So if you’re gonna pay somebody to put batting insulation in your attic or blow in insulation, if they don’t have those soffit vents open for airflow it could create a mold problem. So make sure you invest in that as well.

Step 4: Avoid Using the Attic as Improper Storage Space

Another big mistake we see people doing is that they will have all this plywood down so that they can store their Christmas trees and old photos and things up in their attic.

Well guess what—if you’ve got plywood directly on a piece of two by four, you’ve only got about three inches of insulation if they even insulated underneath the plywood at all.

So get all that plywood out of there and stop using your attic for storage. If you’re concerned about comfort and energy loss and all that kind of thing, try to find another place to put those items.

And I know that’s a big expense, but anyway that could hinder the amount of insulation you’re able to install because of all of the plywood that you’ve got for storage.

---

Step 5: Choosing the Right Type of Attic Insulation

So we’ve got two different types of insulation. We’ve got bat insulation, which is the roll out insulation, and then we’ve also got loose fill insulation.

Most of the time, contractors will install loose fill insulation. It tends to do better in lower attics where you have more obstacles to work around, because you can just blow it around that stuff.

Now the bat installation tends to be more of a DIY project because it’s easier to utilize and manage and you don’t have to rent a machine. You can just buy the batting insulation and throw it up.

Step 6: Loose Fill Insulation Options We Recommend

I wanna talk about three different types of loose fill.

So typically most people in our area are going to use either loose fill fiberglass or cellulose. And as I mentioned before, fiberglass is our number one choice.

Step 7: Bat Insulation Options

Now if you’re going to use a bat style insulation, you’ve got four choices: fiberglass, cellulose, rock wool, and cotton fiber insulation.

If you’re going to tackle this project on your own little bit at a time, then you may decide that using a bat insulation is easier for you to work with and you don’t have to rent a machine—especially if you’re just doing this a little bit at a time.

Most of the time, getting those machines for a few hours can be costly even though it tends to go faster. But remember—don’t do any of that insulation until you’ve air sealed the floor of the attic.

Step 8: Climate and R-Value Considerations

You don’t want to take all that time and blow in R38 or R40 of insulation and then have to suck it all out because you realized that you made a mistake.

So make sure that you’re air sealing first. The other thing you want to do is if you’re in a really cold climate you need to have at least an R49.

Warm climates (like Florida): not as thick, but air sealing remains critical.

Step 9: Removing Bad or Damaged Insulation

As I mentioned before, you may wanna get rid of bad insulation if you’ve had rain come in through the gables or you’ve had some kind of roof leak. Make sure you get yourself an insulation vacuum and suck out all of that bad stuff.

The bad thing about wet insulation is number one, it’s not really that effective. Number two, it’s kinda hard to get out. It’s really tough, it can cake up.

Especially cellulose—can you imagine wet paper? How difficult is that to get out of an attic? So if you’re going to take the time, don’t just blow good insulation on top of bad insulation.

Make sure you invest and get all of that bad insulation out and then air seal the attic.

Step 10: Take Advantage of Energy Credits and Rebates

And lastly, if you live in a part of the country that offers energy credits either through your local municipality or your power company, you may be able to get a bonus or rebate on that insulation.

TBA used to do stuff like that, they don’t really do it anymore. But if you’re in some of those high energy states like California, Washington, Oregon, or up in New England, they may have energy credits that can help you.