Insulation…It’s a good thing.
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Usually on this blog we focus a lot on the pretty stuff. Your basic before and after. What I would consider the fun stuff… but if you were to break down our projects into percentages… I would say usually they are 80% foundation, functional, not pretty work and 20% cosmetic, fun stuff…
This project is definitely in the 80%… but totally, absolutely, positively essential… You’ll understand the reason for all the adjectives in a second!
Since moving Etta to her own bedroom, we have had huge temperature control issues. If our upstairs family room is 73 degrees, her bedroom is 68. At night, in the winter her room is freezing! Even when wearing a one piece fleece jammies suit, with socks and a shirt underneath, plus we wrap her up with her little afghans… We still had to resort to a space heater, which makes my Mommy heart almost sick with worry.
I am embarrassed to say that we haven’t tried to figure out the real problem. And yesterday it became totally clear what was wrong.
First, just a little more back story, a few months back I was asked if I wanted to try out Owens Corning’s new Eco-Touch Insulation product.
Eco Touch is a batt insulation which is made from natural materials, is formaldehyde free and contains 70% recycled content. An awesome DIY insulation product because installing EcoTouch is easy. First, grab your protective glasses and work gloves for cutting. With EcoTouch, no masks are required! To install either fill the joist cavities if they aren’t already full or lay the new batts perpendicular to the full joist. Being sure to follow the manufacturers instructions for recessed lighting fixtures and from any metal chimneys, gas water heater.
So that sounded easy enough, and if it saved us money on heating bills I was totally game. And actually more than saving money, the first thing I thought, is, “I bet that would TOTALLY help Etta’s room stay warmer, if we added some more insulation…” little did I know the actual issue. So I jumped on the offer to try it out…
Well, I took down my Christmas trees and décor yesterday… I know I am a total Grinch! I would take down the tree on Christmas day if I could, I just get overwhelmed by all the junk… uh décor. Anyway, we decided to store our Christmas trees in our attic. We have some other random junk up there too. (which means we have been up there before…) BUT in my defense, also residing in our attic we have our huge HVAC units, two huge air conditioner/heater units, and TONS of ducts…So, we’ve never really looked around.
(see it is hard to see what is going on.)
Well yesterday, we decided to do some rearranging. While up there Justin checked out what is behind these huge ducts (and um… random chairs) since we had insulation on the mind.
Below is what we saw when Justin peered through a small gap above a wall of ducts blocking our view to Etta’s ceiling. What did he find?
NOTHING!
There is NOT A SINGLE INCH OF INSULATION OVER A WHOLE1/4 of our house…. NOT a single inch!? What the heck! How in the world did our house pass code? I seriously want to sue the city for crappy inspecting. Our house in only 10 years old, this wasn’t built in the days before insulation. And yet, they just decided, to NOT insulate, Etta’s room, our upstairs bathroom, and two walk in closets (which include the playhouse) here are some more pictures, so you can really see how bad it is.
We are going to have some major work ahead of us… luckily Justin has the week off.
We also found some other small issues, that we can address more easily like insulation batts that were missing…
But while looking into this awful insulation issue, we learned some other things too… We ran to Home Depot to price things out and get some guidance… luckily we have one less than 1/4 of a mile away!
First, did you know that there are recommended levels of R values for different areas. Go and check out this quiz to see what your insulation needs are. And here is a calculator when purchasing. But, without being or needing a professional’s help, a general rule, if you can see the floor joints in your attic, chances are that your insulation is not thick enough! (Uh, yeah, I’d definitely say we can see the floor joists.)
Where we live, because to the heat and cold, we are supposed to have an R value of 30-60. Right now, we measured and we have approximately an R-value of 13… which is almost less than nothing… well of course, we also have that whole section of nothing! What does that mean? It means we are wasting TONS of money to heat and cool our home.
There are tons of options out there for insulation, and by doing it ourselves we can save a ton of money, both in labor and later in heating and cooling bills. We just have to be sure that we read all directions, especially when it comes to installing around recessed lights and heating exhaust pipes. Hopefully we will get this resolved by tomorrow or Thursday. We are going to have to see how we move forward… but move we will, cuz I am tired of my sweetie pie freezing her hide every night or having to use a space heater.
Have any of you been looking into getting some attic insulation?
**I was provided me with a gift certificate to cover the cost of trying out this product, but the opinions expressed in this post are mine.
Cassity Kmetzsch started Remodelaholic after graduating from Utah State University with a degree in Interior Design. Remodelaholic is the place to share her love for knocking out walls, and building everything back up again to not only add function but beauty to her home. Together with her husband Justin, they have remodeled 6 homes and are working on a seventh. She is a mother of four amazing girls. Making a house a home is her favorite hobby.
Do you know of a Canadian Owens Corning insulation factor quiz? You have me thinking about my attic. Living in Saskatchewan gives me some evil climates. While this year has been gentle, winters can be brutal, and my bedroom in my mid sixties raised bungalow can be freezing.
This may not be a post about pretty things, but I would imagine one of the most important posts of the day. I was horrified scrolling down and looking at non-insulated ceiling areas. I certainly would let the city or county know about this builder to warn others. Who knows how it passed code? Who knows how my first house passed code in 1979. Perhaps there were now energy efficient codes, but there were standards. My upstairs game room was falling in to my garage due to no support. It happened over the 25 years we lived there. You found the problem and can fix it. It would be good for everyone to check this. Great post!!!
we are right with you on ZERO insulation in our kids bedrooms… the builder used blow in and it has since packed down and now there is NOTHING in the upper floor bedrooms….our thermostat will say it is 70* in the house but upstairs is is 52*. We are either going to have to drill a hole every 16 inches and blow in more then patch or take down the dry wall and start over up there….so overwhelming and frustrating.
Wow, that is going to make a huge difference! Be sure to check for tax rebates for making your house more energy efficient.
I had an energy audit done
https://themisadventuresofasfh.blogspot.com/2010/12/home-energy-audit.html
Got a report https://themisadventuresofasfh.blogspot.com/2010/12/energy-audit-report.html
and then insulation installed.
I just had insulation blown in- I had 6 or 8 inches and added about 12 to 15 inches. (Sorry – I know there’s an r value…) my bedroom and my tiny dining addition were hot in the summer and freezing in the winter (dining add on had no insulation – attic, walls, nothing!). The insulation was the BEST thing I could have done. I have noticed IMMEDIATE improvement in how comfortable my home is. I can walk in every room of my house barefoot and in short sleeves. I know it’s a total no-brainer but I was still skeptical. I also had a cabinet in the dining room that was on an outside wall – when they sided they put insulation in the wall and I can no longer use it as a freezer in the winter. I am THRILLED and I am sure you will be too! Do it!
Tammy
Last year Jim rented a machine and blew in insulation in all our exterior walls before he resided. It made a HUGE difference in our heating bill and in how much exterior noise we can hear. Jim’s a licensed builder, so he’s up on all the codes, which made it easy for us to determine what we needed.
So glad you found out why your cutie-pie’s room was so cold!
This is really crazy! My house isn’t insulated but it was built in the early 60s- not ten years ago! In any case, we’ve been insulating as we renovate (mainly walls since we don’t have an attic) and the difference is enormous. Insulation is key to a comfy and cozy home. You’ll see that it’s really not that difficult for a DIYer- especially you guys!
Thank you! It will be nice to see how it goes, I would really love to see a good change!
It’s so important to stay on top of this sort of thing. We had a similar issue, only our house was brand new! Needless to say, it’ll be awesome for you guys to have a toasty, well insulated home. This is a great post to remind us to look behind all the window dressing to what’s really going on in our homes.
We just had foam insulation sprayed in our attic last month and it is making a difference already. With the spray foam, the installers liberally coat the underside of the roof with Demilec expanding foam. In conjunction with that, they vacuumed out what little blown-in cellulose insulation was up there to avoid the chance of condensation occurring in the attic. They fashion “walls” out of thick foam board and spray foam them into place to seal off the attic areas over the living spaces from those over the garage and porches so that those areas cannot allow cold or heat to bleed over into the main space. With our triple-digit Summers, I’m confident this is going to make a big difference. Because the attic becomes part of the conditioned air, the cool air moving thru the ducts isn’t getting re-heated by the surrounding ambient air temp.
Also, while up there, the installers discovered a couple of big leaks where air ducts no longer had solid connections. They bound those back together with aluminum tape and we could tell an immediate difference in the air pressure in our main living room.
The spray foam insulation was nearly twice the price of conventional batt, but comes in at more than 3 times as efficient. Everything that I read (I did a boatload of research on this!) claimed that the foam would pay for itself in reduced electric bills inside of 4 years.
Oh, I would totally love to do that… but I am not sure we will be in this house for that long, and the resale value of homes in our naighborhood just isn’t that great right now! I hope to try this out though some day it really sounds amazing!
By the way, there’s a wealth of energy saving info here:
https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog-building-science-HERS-BPI/
And some clever energy-saving “hacks” on a tight budget here:
https://howtohomeinsulation.com/index.html