Blown-in insulation in Fort Worth TX - even coverage over a sealed attic

Most people call because the room over the garage won't cool down or the power bill keeps going up, and when I get into the attic I usually find a few inches of old, settled insulation and open gaps that need attic air sealing. The price mostly turns on how big the attic is, how much is already up there, which material you pick and whether anything has to be sealed, repaired or removed first. The schedule turns on that same prep, because a roof leak has to be fixed before anything goes in. Your estimate gives you the figure for your own attic.

I start by going up and measuring how many inches you already have, and I look for roof leaks, stained wood, droppings and recessed lights, because insulation laid over any of those won't do much for you. Then our crew seals the gaps around lights, pipes, wires and the attic hatch so the new layer isn't fighting a draft. Around recessed lights that aren't rated for contact with insulation, we put up a barrier first, and we keep the vents along the eaves clear so the attic can still breathe. I talk through fiberglass or cellulose with you, and we blow it in at the density the maker calls for instead of fluffing it to stretch the bags. We carry full depth out to the edges, since thin coverage at the eaves is where a lot of attics lose heat, then we clean up.

Blown-in is often one part of a bigger fix. If some rooms stay uneven after the attic is done, home insulation looks at the walls, floors and crawl space too. When the old material is soaked, moldy or full of droppings, we handle insulation removal first, because new fill on top just buries the problem.

Fort Worth has adopted an energy code, and recommended insulation levels change with the climate and with where in the house the insulation goes. So how deep we fill your attic follows what an attic in our climate needs, not whatever the bags happen to cover.

A lot of houses here run their ductwork through the attic, and that space gets very hot in our summers, so I look at the ducts before I recommend anything. Spray foam costs more and seals air while it insulates, and when the ducts live up there it can be worth it. For most attics, though, sealing the gaps and topping up with loose fill usually wins. In older houses we often find a thin layer that has settled for years, and we see the same thing on jobs in Haltom City and North Richland Hills.