Insulation for dummies. (me)
 

I'm pretty sure the home I just bought needs it because nobody is in it yet and I have the thermostat set to 55* and the natural gas bill was $200. I suspect the furnace is kicking on more than it should due to heat loss. It's built in 1975.

I know I can hire this out, but how hard is it to do? I mean physically. I'm 5'2" and about 105. I'm smart but not too strong, meaning I could watch online and read how to do it, but COULD I do it? I don't mind spending the cash to hire out because sometimes you just have to if you don't want it to look like a chimp did it. :)

I plan on having one of those energy audits either this week or next.

It depends on what kind of insulation we're talking about. If you're looking to just caulk and weatherstrip the doors/windows, that's pretty easy to do. If you're adding insulation to the attic, that's pretty easy too. If you're looking at insulating existing walls - say with expanding foam - then you will want to hire a pro.
Also, don't forget to have your gas lines & furnace checked! It could be that you're leaking gas somewhere or the furnace needs a tune-up.

As noted, it does depend on the level you are trying to do.

If you plan on replacing batts in the wall, it isn't hard at all...maybe one helper and a good staple gun.

You would run into some work pulling off the wall covering, but it would pay off in the end.

I would first do as the other poster said, caulk around doors, windows, outlets, pipes, any opening to the outside should get attention. The spray foam that expands works great, is easy to handle and will seal up. Also, check the attic stairs (if it has it) our older home leaked around it and would just let the heat out instead of stacking it up.

Also, make sure fans, lights are adequately insulated and sealed.

I was only thinking attic..but good ideas on the other stuff and the furnace. That might be it. Thanks.

It's been so, so cold here but the windows seem to be very tight. They were recently replaced. I did feel all the outlets and ended up buying that foam backing and took off all the switchplates and stuck the foam in. That seemed to get rid of the cold air from there.

Also check your thermostat as well. Where I work, the rooms were always cold and we would turn up the heat. Well I called facilities and complained and they looked at the thermostat..

it was out of calibration by 15 degrees..lol..they got it calibrated and reset and now it works great.

Some thermostats can be calibrated and others cannot. My house thermostat will make the heat come on until where it is located gets warmer..sigh..while the bedroom, bath and closet are hotter that blue blazes.

Sometimes location can make all the difference!

It would help if we knew what state you lived in.

I think the energy audit should tell you quite a bit about what you need to do . If the attic is realatively easy to get in & you have room to move around in there it shouldn't be too diffucult to add more insulation to it . Kind of a dirty , nasty job but doesn't require exceptional skill or strength .
Walls would require a lot more work if there's already fiberglass batts in them . If by chance the walls aren't insulated you can drill holes & blow insulation in them which isn't too difficult to do or have done .
Crawl space if not on a basement , is also a dirty , nasty job but if there's room to work it also doesn't require exceptional skill or strength .
As others have said pay particular attention to the smaller things such as caulking , weatherstripping , etc .
As far as strength or skill you should be able to do most if not all the work yourself unless you have a lot of aches & pains .
Since you are primarily thinking attic I would say yes as far as skill & strength go , you can do it yourself .
You haven't told us how large this house is or wheather or not it's on a basement or crawl space or pad . The design , efficency & type of heating system can also make a large difference .

Fourth (or is it fifth) the notion of sealing all places where air can infiltrate. A gap under a door is just like leaving your window open a crack. Cold air that seeps in is air that needs to be reheated, no cold air, no reheating. It's amazing the difference a tightly sealed house can make.

One other suggestion I haven't seen is to inspect your ducting if you can. A lot of times it leaks like a sieve at the connections dumping your valuable heat into unconditioned space, and you don't want to be paying to heat mother nature.

Fish- I'm in MN like you. :) It's been coooold.

I think it's about 2900 sq feet - one level with a basement.

I just scheduled an audit by my gas co. Should be interesting. Thanks for all the advice.

FWIW, it's been this way, everywhere this year and coupled with increases in energy costs, painful to say the least. I have paid $900 for propane, so far this year and we have a very small, relatively sealed/insulated house.

The energy audit will be a good thing for you to get started with. All other tips spot on.

For where the house is , the winter we've had & the size of the house I don't know that a bill for $200.00 for a month is too far out of line . I'm sure there are at least a few things you can do though . From what friends of ours in MN have said , it's been colder than a well diggers butt up there .

It has been cold.

I guess it seemed high to me because we're paying about that for the house I live in now..and we use gas for other things. The house being audited is empty, so $200 seemed high since we're not there using the water heater or stove or dryer. It really is tough having to pay utilities for two homes, I don't recommend it! :) As soon as this dumb snow starts to melt, we're putting it on the market. In the meantime, nobody is looking.

Fishhead, Sounds like you have a furnace - forced air, and it sounds like the ductwork needs to be balanced. You can get it close by closing the registers where it's warm and opening where cold. But an HVAC guy will measure the CFM, FPM, Temp. rise across the heat exchanger, and maybe do a blower door check to find leakage. Thermostat location: keep it out of the sun, away from drafts, on an interior wall. Also, there's what they call an 'anticipator' that needs to be set to control the burner cycle length. HTH :cowboy:

Insulating the walls is a difficult job. If you want to put in fiberglass batts, you have to tear off the sheetrock, put in the batts, and put up new sheetrock. The new sheetrock has to be taped, mudded, sanded, and painted. Blown in insulation requires that you drill a hole into each cavity between studs and blow the insulation in using a machine. Usually the holes have to be 16 inches apart. You have to fill the holes in and seal them when you are done.

The walls probably have insulation in them already. Most houses built in 1975 are insulated, in part because the gas shortages scared most folks into doing it.

Your gas bill is not excessive. I used to get $450 gas bills for my house for January. It was built in 1898 and had no insulation in the walls until I blew some in. If your water heater is turned on, it is keeping the water hot and you are not using it. Turn the water heater and stove pilot lights off but be careful that the gas shuts off too so you don't blow up the house.

The energy audit will tell you what you need to do.

A gas range's pilot lites will only cost about $2/month. If you heat your water with a gas fired water heater, you can turn the thermostat valve to 'pilot'. If your HW comes off the boiler, the furnace or boiler has to stay on; unless you drain everything and add propylene glycol (antifreeze) to all the traps.

I'm on the monthly average billing and my monthly payment is $60 ($720/yr). I also cook with natural gas.

I expect my monthly payment to be adjusted up but not too much even though I've been home during the day when I normally would turn down my heat to 60.

Great advice everyone - hope it can be useful to others reading this thread later on.

Fishhead..your bill sounds like a dream. :)

Please inform us of the results of your energy audit .

So, your house is 39 years old. Any idea on how old the furnace is? Is it the original or has it been replaced?

Furnace efficiency has come a long way in 39 years if it happens to be the original!!

You don't say if you heat your basement or not, but we have a ventless heater in our basement. Since heat rises, it means all of that heat is warming up the 1st floor. We can tell a major difference in comfort if we don't have the ventless heater on in the basement.

An energy audit should tell you where your heat is going. Depending on how your house was built, it might be fairly easy to insulate it. Get the audit done and go from there.

We do heat the basement and I believe the furnace is within 10 years old? We actually had someone come and cut in some ductwork beneath the addition the previous owners had added on. The space below it (in the basement) had ducts, but no openings, so that area wasn't heated. We can already tell a difference in the warmth in the room above.

The people who do the audit are apparently really busy but hopefully within the next week or two they can come on out. They do the infrared testing too which will be an eye-opener. :) And yes, I'll share the results!

Hi,
Insulating the attic yourself by blowing cellulose in is relatively easy. Dusty but not hard. Its nice to have a breathing mask.
You need a 2nd person down at the insulation blower to feed in bails and shut it down if need be.

Some of the big box hardware stores will loan you the blower for free if you buy the insulation from them.

You want to take the time to seal all the infiltration paths between the living space and the attic before you add new insulation. This means sealing all the wire and plumbing penetrations up into the attic as well as light fixtures, can lights, bathroom vent fans, ... People think that the worst infiltration leaks are around doors and windows, and I suppose this can be true on some homes, but the studies show that for most homes its the exfiltration of air from the living space to the attic that pulls air into the house living space that is the biggest leak area. Good sealing also helps to prevent attic moisture problems.

Some info on DIY insulation blowing here: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...htm#Insulating

The Bruce Harley book on Weatherizing and Insulating is really good.

Gary

I priced cellulose at Menard's and Home Depot.

For my little house (24x28) it won't take many bales of insulation so it would be cheaper to pay the lower price per bale and rent the blower for $35/4 hrs than it was to buy the higher priced bale and get the blower for free.

I haven't done it yet because like always there are 3 projects to do before I can get to this step.

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Personlly I'd also knock the thermostat down few degrees. If no one is home why keep it comfortable? Set it to 40 and the pipes won't freeze.

We've replaced insulation in an attic/crawl space, that's pretty simple- just make sure you put the correct side down (and I don't actually remember which is the correct side, so ask an expert or a salesperson), then plastic windows and any doors that won't be used. Use those strips of self-adhesive stuff for the gaps under doors you will be using. Foam behind outlets is good, but if the walls are really poorly insulated you can tape plastic over the outlets and switches, too. If you aren't living there it doesn't much matter how it looks inside right now, right?

40* - wow, that seems low! I had wanted to set it lower but during our extremely cold spell (temps of -30) I was really worried about things freezing and I wasn't able to get over there every day..more like 1x a week. But the temperature is warming up, thankfully. High of 30 ABOVE. Woo!

The windows seem to be good, they're new within the last 5 years I think, and are Pella.

If you set the thermostat at 40 the furnace will keep the thermostat at 40 but other areas could fall below freezing. This could include areas where your pipes are and they will freeze. I would leave the thermostat set at 50.

Shut off the water to the house. If it's city water there will be a valve by the meter. If it's a well just shut off the electrical breaker for the well pump. If a pipe breaks and the water is shut off nothing too bad happens vs. a big mess and lots of damage if everything gets wet.

In regards to the attic insulation, if there is a vapor barrier it should always go towards the heated space. This prevents water vapor from cooking and bathing from saturating the insul.
The exception to this is in the summer in really humid locales. Then the vapor barrier goes toward the unconditioned space, or, the outdoors. This prevents the insul. from getting saturated. It seperates the humid outside air from the drier conditioned air inside the house.

When we built our house insulation was one of the few things we had done--it's a nasty job and it was actually cheaper to have it done than buy the insulation and do it ourselves.

I'm an Energy Auditor. Allow me to rant for a minute.

A house built in 1975 will have plywood walls with fiberglass in them. I hate fiberglass, but it's not worth messing with it unless you're doing something else inside the wall anyway. Just make sure to seal the holes the best you can. Caulk around window trim. Cover windows with shrink film in the winters if they're leaky. (New windows are rarely a good investment.) Caulk along baseboards and anywhere else you feel a draft. I use an infra-red camera, but if you can borrow a point and shoot IR thermometer it's almost as good, especially if you're patient.

Basements need to be warm and dry. If it's damp, figure out why. Moisture is bad. It causes rot and asthma as a house gets tightened up. In a loose house it condenses in the attic and rots the roof. Paint the floor and lower walls. If it's bare concrete, get a foam contractor to foam from the underside of the subfloor overhead to 2' below exterior grade. Paint the walls ahead of time so that the foam overlaps. If the basement is in really rough shape, lay down a membrane instead. People with dirt floor basements should just go ahead and lay the membrane. (poly, roof rubber, whatever.) Concrete on it's own is not a moisture membrane. A basement that looks dry can still give off a lot of moisture. If a cardboard box deteriorates if left on the floor for a year, you have a wet basement.

Make sure basement doors and windows are well sealed. Bulkhead doors should get an air sealed foam hatch. These can be built as interlocking pieces. The hatch should be horizontal at about 6" below ground level, with foam buried horizontally for about 2' out from the bulkhead foundation, about 6" down, so that the bulkhead foundation won't freeze. If the bulkhead freezes it can crack it off the rest of the foundation.

Foaming the basement walls typically saves at least 20% on the heating bill. It air-seals, insulates, and moisture seals the upper part of the foundation wall, all in one swell foop. Get a pro to do this. It won't cost much more than buying the materials to do it yourself, and gives a much better result. Don't just try gluing foam board up and think you'll get anywhere near as good of result.

Before you insulate the attic, look around. Plumbers and electricians and chimney masons love to leave large holes. The gap between chimney and wood should be 2" by code, but that doesn't mean it should be left open. Get some drip edge metal and snips and bridge that gap. You may need other material, depending how large of gap they left. Seal it up with RTV caulk (stove shops carry it) once the metal is in place. Make it so no air can follow the chimney up from the basement and wall cavities into the attic.

Look around the rest of the attic for holes. Foam (Great Stuff: Get the Professional Gun if you're going to do more than five cans worth of foaming, because you can control the discharge and a can goes much further) any hole, any wire penetration, any open crack along a wall top, any gap around a stink pipe.

Make sure there are no exhaust vents that dump wet air into the attic. These should vent out, preferably through a gable end, through a fitting like a dryer wall fitting, and run through rigid metal ducting. Plastic dryer vent is (duh!) plastic, and will eventually leak. Run the vent duct where it will be buried by insulation. It's no good to point the vent duct at a gable end vent or mushroom vent from a foot away. That doesn't get the moisture out.

You could build a dam around the attic hatch so insulation won't fall down it, or you can seal over the inside hatch and find a place on the outside to put a hatch. If you keep the inside hatch, it will need an insulated lid, with a plywood bottom that rests on a gasket. We like door gasket kits to make these. The lid should fit well and be held down to compress the gasket slightly with several hook and eye latches. If you don't like the look, make a second visual hatch below that. If you have folding pull down stairs, you'll have to put the insulating hatch high enough in the dam well to make room for the folded stairs.

Once you have the attic floor tight and the hatch dealt with , move any fiberglass insulation away from the outer walls by a foot or two. Move it into an even layer. Fiberglass works best when in an air-tight box, and can provide a circulation path if it reaches the edge of the space.

If you have soffit vents, they should have Proper Vents(tm) or similar to make a path for the air to move from the soffit up into the rest of the attic. The space between the top plate and the underside of the Proper Vent should be filled with blocking, foam board, plywood, OSB, or whatever else so that wind can't blow through the soffit bay under the Proper Vent and make the cellulose blow around. Seal the blocking material edges with spray foam.

Then get the cellulose. Cellulose is slightly better insulation than fiberglass (fiberglass installed in ideal conditions, that is). Fill the attic to R-60, which is about 18" deep. Be sure to cover any fiberglass with at least 3" of cellulose, to prevent air currents from reaching and circulating through the fiberglass.

If you want a storage area in the attic, you can potentially install rafter ties high enough to put a platform on above the insulation, or (better yet) you can build a shed or use your nice dry basement.

After all that, be sure that you have proper combustion air supplied to any stove, furnace, water heater, etc., and that all of them have proper venting. This may mean changing your wood stove to one that can take a combustion air kit, or you can have a vent that leads to the stove and is only open when the stove is burning. If the house becomes too stuffy and damp, be sure to use the bathroom vent after you shower and the stove fan when you cook. I've seen tight houses where a window had to be left open all winter because it was too moist. Then they got a heat recovery ventilator and that problem went away while reducing their heat demand because they could then shut the window.

Google Doug rye he has some great info for new and remodel type insulating projects..

Huisjen summed it up.

That being said, attic insulTion isn't difficult, just dusty and itchy if you use fiberglass. If you use Blow in (cellulose), you dump a bag into the machine on ground level, and run a big hose into the attic. You just point the hose where you want insulation and it blows out. If you use fiberglass rolls, take a roll to the attic and cut the paper/plastic holding the roll tight. It will start to unroll itself and expand. I've done both, and my wife helped with the rolls (she's smaller and fit into the nooks and crannies of my attic corners better)

...............Find a store that sells the liquid that kids use the little wand to make bubbles with ! Then , stand inside and make bubbles around all windows and doors while someone stands outside while the fan is blowing air inside of your home . They should be able to see the escaping bubbles moving through the leaking door jamb or window on the outside of your home . , fordy:cowboy:

I concur with this information. Let me add that blown in insulation can be easily done by one person. Both Johns-Mansville and Owens corning have blower machines with a remote controller at the head, allowing one person to operate the entire operation. I've insulated a lot of house attics and walls by myself without any problem. For a women I think the hardest operation would be moving the bales of compressed insulation from the truck to the machine. I'd also add that I've found outlet and switch box gaskets to be of value. Good luck with your project.

Great info everyone. :) I'm still waiting for the company to call me back about scheduling... grr.

Call several companies and compare prices and warantees. :gromit: