My old house has blown-in insulation in the attic. It’s waaaay too thin, right now, the ceiling joists are easily visible. Is there the “home version” of a blower or do I have to hire this out?
Can I roll out pink-stuff on-top instead? Would this be easier?
Advice/opinions/etc welcome!
I’d get more cellulose blown in. The newer stuff doesn’t pack down over time nearly as much as the old stuff did. I don’t think there is a DIY option for this though.
Rolling out fiberglass is an easy and cheaper fix, but it’s a nasty job. Wear a respirator, long sleeves and pants. I don’t care how hot it is in your attic, if you wear shorts and a t-shirt, you’ll regret it. And take a cold, then hot shower immediately after.
You can rent/borrow the insulation blower from the place where you purchase the insulation. I helped my neighbor do it for his house last year, using bales of cellulose insulation. The blower and the insulation came with instructions. It can be done alone, but is far simpler if you have one person loading the blower while the second person manages the discharge. The insulation sheet said a nuisance mask (the paper kind) is sufficient, but I chose to wear a filter mask. I’ve had experience with fiberglass batts, too, and the cellulose is nowhere near as nasty to deal with.
You might get an insulation contractor to bid the job after you price out what it will cost to do it yourself. Sometimes they get a good enough break on the price of insulation that you can have it installed for close to the same cost as doing it on your own.
How about the sheet stuff? More expensive than pink but less messy.
I just did this a few months ago. Cellulose was noticeably cheaper than fiberglass and the blower rental was free if you bought 10 bales of the stuff.
The blower is very heavy - you’ll want a pickup and one or two strong backs to help you load it in, I’d bring a bit of plywood so you have a ramp to roll it up.
Get the blower as close to the area in question as possible so you have a short hose run (they supplied about 50’ of hose with mine). However, put it outside, or someplace you don’t mind getting messy (you can run the hose through a window, etc).
Run the hose into your attic. Have a couple of those hanging task lights with CFL bulbs (so it doesn’t get as hot). Definitely wear a dust mask. You will be getting dusty!
I’d recommend that whatever opening you feed the hose through, cover it with towels so that cellulose can’t blow out through the hole - there will be a lot of it flying about, I spent an hour or two vacuuming up parts of my house afterwards because I left the attic door open.
Something you will find very useful is a pair of those little two-way radios. Communication between the installer and the guy manning the blower will be difficult and being able to tell them to start and stop is important.
The stuff goes in easily but it makes a bit of a mess - it comes out more forcefully than the brochure indicated; not a firehose but not a gentle dribble. You sort of aim it into place, you don’t pour it out. There’s a bit of prep work you should do beforehand to make sure you don’t clog your attic vents and whatnot. You should also think about any lights that are in your attic (such as ceiling lights for the room below), if they are not rated for insulation contact you need to have at least 3" free all around the fixture, best way to do this is to set up a “can” around it (cardboard concrete form tube or something) and then cover the top (otherwise cellulose will go into the top and you’ll have to vacuum it out).
If you are putting in enough to be level with the ceiling beams it’s easy to eyeball. If you need to put in a lot more (say 12" in an attic with 2x6 beams) then you can staple strips of stiff paper/cardboard all around so they stick up to the right depth.
When you start blowing the stuff in it’ll quickly seem like you are working in a snowstorm. There’s little bits and dust flying all around, however it settles very quickly.
I’m quite happy with how it came out but it was messier than I’d thought it would be; I’d certainly use it again (much easier to fill odd-shaped areas, work around wires, get into little nooks and crannies compared to fiberglass) and think the second time around would be a lot simpler. I did some research and cellulose has a lot of advantages over fiberglass.
When I came out of my attic I found a certain amount of very fine dust had settled in the TV room directly below. It’s heavy dust though, it doesn’t float for days, so no coughing or anything (and no itching, unlike fiberglass), but I did have to go to work with the vacuum and a washcloth, thus my advice to seal up the attic while you’re working up there. Clothes I wore needed shaking out and then a trip through the laundry machine.
Insulation works by creating dead air space. Little mass, lots of air pockets. If you want to do a quick job, roll the pink stuff over the joists in a perpendicular fashion. You will create a lot of dead air space. There will be dead air between the old insulation and the pink stuff. The absolute ideal? Maybe not. Effective? Yes!
What’s the nomenclature for insulation in a home? RS, something like that?
And the higher the number the better, right?
How is that number determined?
This was the case when we priced the job out.
Excellent advice all.
Valgard, what’s the bale expansion ratio? I’ve got a space about 30x60 to fill, it might as well be empty for what’s there now. How deep did you pack it and what was your bale to sq-ft ratio?
I don’t have any can lights below this part of the house, thankfully. I haven’t checked the new addition yet. Hopefully, they contractor did it right. I do want to move a ceiling fixture downstairs, though. I think that’d be best done before I bury everything in fluff.
FoisGrasIsEvil, I think it’s just “R” Value. R5, R12, etc.
A table at ColoradoENERGY.com shows 3.13 “R’s” per inch of cellulose attic insulation. It also recommends R40 for attics. That’d be about 12 inches deep of cellulose. The stuff I have can’t be deeper than 2 inches in places.
-B
FYI
If you have soffit vents, don’t cover them up
I blew in 6 inches of cellulose (even with top of ceiling beams) and will be putting another 6 inches of insulation on top of that for 12 inches total (recommendation for my area which is a moderate climate).
Here’s the installation chart from GreenFiber, I believe that’s the brand that I bought at the local Home Despot. For 12" of insulation they show a minimum 60 bags for 1000 square feet so you’d be looking at about 108 bags for 1800 square feet. With that much to do, and if you have enough room to maneuver easily in your attic, you’ll probably get pretty good at it pretty fast (I started with a ~250 sq ft section with crappy headroom) so you won’t waste a lot, but I’d say get some extra bales (maybe 10% extra, you should be able to return what you don’t open).
http://www.cocooninsulation.com/_assets/PDFs/PM-6.3-19.pdf
I paid under $10/bale. I think for over 100 bales you’d probably want to call the local home improvement stores and make a special order. They should have no problem delivering it and you might be able to get a break on the price. Also see how long you’ll get the blower for (like I said I got it free for 2 days and I only bought $100 of the stuff).
What’s nice about cellulose is that it blows right around any wires, pipes and so on. You don’t want to do anything other than let it shoot out of the hose, avoid the temptation to pack it in place afterwards by hand, that’ll just compress it.