We need to get our attic re-insulated. I would greatly prefer batts or blankets, but the contractor we talked to last night is telling us that blown-in would be so much better. Not that I don’t trust him, but I’m sure that he can do the work faster and make more money with blown-in.
So, is he blowing smoke along with the insulation?
There have been a couple of threads about this if you search for “insulation”. I blew cellulose insulation into my attic and I’m quite happy with it. It’s got a number of advantages over fiberglass (including that it cost me about 50% what fiberglass would for the same R-value). One thing that I like is that it forms around any obstructions, so all those little crevices get filled, pipes and wires don’t affect the installation and so on. I could also reach areas that would have been near impossible to do with batts.
“Re-insulate?” Is there insulation already there?
Anyway, I used to install insulations many years ago while I was in college. My uncle has a side business doing this and they use pretty much anything out there. I also insulated my attic a year ago. There are ups and downs to whatever you use. Insulating an attic can be done with batting, but if you are wanting a higher R value I recomend you will need to go with the blown in insulation.
The contractor is suggesting blown insulation probably for a couple of reasons. It’s easier, you can get a higher R value (note: blown insulation will settle over time, but nothing drastic ), and they will be done in a couple of hours. Batting insulation is more labor intensive and could take a considerable amount of time to complete a job.
When I was working with my uncle we never put batting insulation in an attic unless we were at a work site where a house was being built. In most, if not all, of those houses we didn’t even mess with the attic. Instead we would come back to the house at a later date and use blown insulation for the attic. On a normal blown insulation job I would meet my uncle after work (about 5:30 p.m.), load up the equipment, head to the site, do the job, pick up our gear, head back to the shop to drop off the equipment, and head home. Most nights I would be home by nine o’clock (I lived 30 minutes away from where my uncle lived). When we messed with batting insulation we were normally installing into the walls on a house being built. Depending on the size of the house a job could take anywhere from one day to two weeks.
My suggestion. Go with the blown insulation.
As I said in a previous thread, if you do go with fiberglass, wear clothing that fully covers you from the neck down and a respirator. I don’t give a crap how hot it is in the attic, if you don’t, you’ll regret it. Also, taking a cool shower, followed by a hot shower seems to keep the itching to a minimum. That said, the consensus in the other thread (which I can’t find for some reason) was that blown in is cheaper, easier, and better.