What is best attic insulation
Things To Know Before Insulating Your Attic | Improve Comfort
hey Michael Church crawlspace ninja and
basement ninja and 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 approve improve
efficiency and also make your house more
comfortable so you want to 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 10 to 50% 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 will be that
much insulation and you know they're
walking around in hoodies and all that
kind of stuff so what we want to do is
we want to 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 number one make
sure that if you're gonna go through all
the expense of insulating your attic air
seal all the major penetrations in the
attic floor this is all of the 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 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 want to make sure all
that is done properly you want to make
sure that your air sealing all of those
chases and your attic hatches and all of
that stuff and if you've got one of
those big monster fans that's in your
hallway that they've installed back in
the 70s and 80s to to ventilate the
house I recommend you just yank that
dude out and seal all that guy up and
and the air seal that properly and redo
that that a drywall and that should take
care of most of the air loss from your
living space up into your attic 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
maybe looks like it might have debris or
different things like that you could be
getting water from the roof leaking or
from your gable vent okay
whenever we did our attic we had two
Gables obviously it was a shotgun style
attic so you had two Gables okay well
one side one gable was taken on all this
blowing rain so when we got up there to
suck out all that old insulation that 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 want to make
sure you air seal those Gables if you
find out that they're letting water come
in because you don't want to blow in
insulation or or put batting down or
whatever down there only for that
insulation to get wet and ruined in the
future
another big mistake that we see people
not doing as a matter of fact we've had
quite a few people call us that they
have developed a mold problem after they
hired a contractor to blow in insulation
because they didn't make sure the attic
was properly ventilated okay so there's
two types of ventilation there's active
and passive active inhalation would be
installing solar attic fans or some kind
of active ventilation that comes on when
the temperature gets to a certain point
passive ventilation is where you have
maybe the gable and I'm sorry the soffit
and the ridge vent so 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 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 air flow it could
create a mold problem so make sure
you invest in that as well okay 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 2x4
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 okay so we've got
two different types of insulation we've
got batt insulation and 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 and
lower attics where you have more
obstacles to work around and all this
because you can just blow it around that
that stuff now the bad insulation 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 so I'm going to talk about
three different types of Louisville the
one we personally like the best is the
fiberglass okay because it's naturally
fire retardant it tends to be about the
same in cost the r-value is about an r2
per inch so you know it's it's really
good it's clean it blows in clean it
tends to be less dusty
[Applause]
then some of the cellulose and rockwool
items that we've seen but the advantage
of rock wool is that it has a chemical
treatment that can you know cause pests
not to want to nest in it and things
like that so a lot of your pest control
companies will blow in only Rockwell
that's all they use I'm sorry only
cellulose they only blow in cellulose
that's the only kind of insulation
they'll use because a lot of people will
call pest control companies to do the
insulation after they've had a raccoon
investment or mice or rats or things
like that obviously you don't want to
have a litter box
over your house so one of the things you
can do if you're gonna use either
cellulose or fiberglass is make sure you
seal all of those penetrations around
the attic to keep pests and different
things from climbing in it's called
exclusion so you can create an exclusion
zone all around the Attic to stop that
the last one that we come across very
little in our area is rock wall okay so
from what I understand about rock wall
as it tends to be more expensive than
the other two and it's just harder to
get a hold of in certain areas so
typically most people in our area it's
gonna use either loose fill fiberglass
or cellulose and as I mentioned before
fiberglass is our number one choice now
if you're gonna use a bat style
insulation then you've got four choices
you still have fiberglass you still have
two cellulose you still have rock wall
but they've also got some cotton fiber
insulation Zout there so if you're gonna
tackle this project on your own a little
bit at a time then you may decide that
using a batt 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 you
know most of the time getting those
machines for a few hours can be costly
and all that 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 you don't want to
take all that time and blow in you know
our 38 or our 49 of insulation and then
have to suck it all out because you've
realized that you made a mistake so make
sure that your 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
r49 okay and then if you're in a warmer
climate you can get away with less and a
temperate climate like maybe Tennessee
you want to go with at least in our 38
so that's about 13 12 13 inches of
insulation would be our 38 so the colder
if you're up in Minnesota you want to go
a lot thicker if you're down in Florida
you don't have to go quite as thick but
air sealing is still just as important
no matter what your climate is to stop
drafting and all that sort of thing okay
so as I mentioned before you may want to
get rid of bad insulation if you've had
rain come in through the gables or
you've had some kind of roof leak or
something like that make sure you get
yourself an insulation vacuum and suck
out all of that bad stuff and the bad
thing about wet insulation is number one
it's not really that effective but
number two it's kind of hard to get out
it's really tough I can cake up and all
that sort of thing so make sure that if
you've got a lot of caked up insulation
up there especially that's cellulose I
mean can you imagine wet paper how
difficult is that to get out of an attic
so if you're gonna take the time don't
just blow good insulation on top of that
insulation make sure you invest and get
all of that bad insulation out and then
air seal the attic and lastly if you
live in a part of the country that
offers energy credits either through
your local municipality your power or
things like that TVA 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 probably California
over on the west coast up in Washington
Oregon even up in New England they may
have energy credits that can help you
get a bonus or a rebate on that
insulation that you install so my name
is Michael church with crawlspace ninja
I hope this was helpful for you before
you tackle that attic insulation make
sure you take a look at all those tips
and I hope you make it a happy and
blessed day and we'll see you later
the Christmas lights feel the city there
are people everywhere snow is falling
white and fruity
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as eyes
