Attic Insulation

Insulation is a great thermal barrier but does very little to stop air flow, making air-sealing electrical, plumbing, & duct penetrations in your attic floor, along with every wall top plate, a crucial step in your home’s attic insulation system. Local building code started requiring these places to be air sealed in homes built after 2006, but modern garages and older homes are almost never sealed. Whenever we’re installing insulation in an empty attic, this is the first step of the process.

Effectively air-sealing the attic floor isn’t possible if you already have insulation in your attic, In this case, air-sealing your home from the inside is the way to solve the problem.

The vents around the soffit of your roof (known as soffit vents) serve as the intake for your attic’s ventilation. We install baffles between your roof’s trusses at each soffit vent to keep them clear of insulation and make sure your attic ventilation stays open to airflow.

A material’s R-value is a measure of its thermal resistance – you can think of it as the “insulating power” of the material. Each brand of insulation needs to be installed to a specific depth and density (usually measured in bags of material per 1000 square feet) to reach a target R-value. This combination of depth and density for each R-value is known as a material’s coverage chart. Find more information for the material we install, Owens Corning L77 Loosefill Fiberglass, here.

It’s easy to accidentally (or intentionally) “stretch” the coverage of blown-in insulation by over-conditioning it, which is just industry speak for making it extra fluffy. This results in insulation that looks to be the right depth but isn’t dense enough, leaving you with less R-value than you want.

Installing insulation rulers throughout your attic, installing above the minimum required depth, and keeping track of how many bags of insulation we install in your attic makes sure we’re providing a final product that provides the R-value you asked for or greater.

The last thing you want is to get covered in a shower of insulation when you open your attic access. That’s why we install a barrier around the edge of every attic access. This barrier also let’s us install your attic insulation to its full-depth all the way up to the edge of your attic access.

We typically construct these access barriers out of the same heavy-duty cardboard that we use for baffles (have you seen the price of lumber lately?). We do also offer an option to upgrade to a solid, framed-in plywood access barrier for anyone who plans on getting into their attic often and wants the extra support.

If you’re insulating your attic it should be your entire attic, including the often ignored piece of drywall that serves as the cover for your attic access.

We insulate every attic access cover with a piece of batt insulation that matches the R-value of the rest of your attic. This gives your entire attic a consistent insulation level without any gaps or low points, without getting showered with insulation when you open the access.

We install baffles to keep your intake vents clear, but it’s always a good idea to take an extra step to make sure that nothing is blocking them – whether it be stray insulation that found its way past the baffles during the install or decades of dust buildup that has never been cleaned. That’s why we blow out every soffit vent from outside of your home once your attic insulation install is complete, ensuring your attic ventilation is functioning at its best.