Attic insulation in Fort Worth TX - upstairs rooms that hold their temperature

Most people call us because the upstairs is hot by afternoon, one room never matches the rest, or the power bill keeps climbing with the thermostat set the same. The price turns on the size of the attic, how many inches are already up there, whether the old layer is good enough to stay and how many gaps need attic air sealing first. The schedule mostly depends on what has to be fixed before anything goes down. If there's a roof leak, for example, that gets repaired first. The on-site estimate is where you get the figure for your own house.

I start in your attic with a flashlight and a tape measure. I check how much insulation is up there and what shape it's in, then tell you plainly whether adding more is worth it, because sometimes it isn't. I also look for anything that has to be fixed before a new layer goes down: wet or matted insulation, moldy or soft rafters, a bath fan blowing into the attic instead of outside, blocked eave vents and old knob and tube wiring. Any leaks or damage get dealt with first. If the problem is the roof, I'll tell you to call a roofer before you spend money with us. Then our crew seals the gaps around pipes, wires, the hatch and the light fixtures. We keep the insulation back from the eave vents and from any can lights that aren't rated for contact, and we lay the new layer evenly from edge to edge, so the outer walls get the same depth as the middle.

Most attics get topped up with blown-in insulation, which is loose fill blown through a hose. We use it because it settles around joists and into corners better than rolls do. If the drafts and hot rooms go past the attic, into walls or floors, we look at it through our home insulation work instead of just adding depth overhead.

Texas lets a city or county add its own amendments to the energy code. In some counties those changes can't make the efficiency rules any weaker, so what applies to your house can be stricter than a general guide suggests. That's one reason we check with your city's building office before the work starts to find out what the job needs, and we take care of any permit and inspection on our end. It's also worth calling your electric utility before we begin. Many utilities offer rebates for a home energy assessment and for some air sealing and insulation work, and that's easier to set up before the job than after.

Around Fort Worth we often find a few inches left from when the house was built. It's usually packed down and thin along the eaves, with ductwork running right through it. We see the same thing on jobs in Haltom City and North Richland Hills, and we work in the same order there. We seal first, repair next and insulate last.