Home insulation in San Luis AZ - an attic sealed first, then filled evenly

Most calls start the same way. The room over the garage is hot by noon, the upstairs never catches up, or the power bill keeps climbing every summer. The price turns on how big the attic is, how much is already up there, how many gaps need sealing and whether old material has to come out before anything new goes in. The schedule turns on whether your furnace or water heater venting needs attention before we seal, and on getting into the attic early in the day, before summer heat makes it rough to work up there. I'll give you your own figure after I've looked at the house.

I start with what's already in your attic, how many inches, whether it's dry and clean, and how your furnace and water heater vent, and only then do I decide what the house needs. Air sealing comes next, closing the gaps around can lights, pipes and the attic hatch, so the new insulation isn't fighting a draft. We keep the eave vents clear so the attic can still breathe, then add blown-in insulation, loose fill sent through a hose, and carry it full depth out to the edges, where crews often leave it thin. Each even layer raises the R-value, the measure of how well insulation slows heat, and higher is better. A radiant barrier does the most in an attic that's thin on insulation, so I won't push one on an attic that's already well covered. Spray foam costs more and seals air while it insulates, but sealing the gaps and topping up loose fill usually wins, unless your ductwork runs through the attic, and then foam often earns its price.

Some houses need other work first. If what's up there is wet or full of droppings, insulation removal comes first, because new material over it just hides the problem. If your floors run cold or a room sits over an open space below, crawl space insulation handles the part of the house the attic can't.

San Luis builds for heat. The city's building code, run by the Building Safety Division under the building official, plans houses around a 109-degree summer day outside and 75 degrees inside, and most of that difference gets fought at the attic floor. That's why we put our effort into the attic first, and why a radiant barrier gets a real look on houses that are thin up there. Before work starts, we check with the city's building office, and if a permit is needed, we pull it and set up the inspections.

Around here we see a lot of older stucco houses with a few inches of settled insulation and eave vents buried under it. We find the same on jobs in Somerton and Yuma, and we work in the cities around them too.