Need Advice About Fixing the Insulation in Our Attic...

[Silver Gaia]

Hi DU DIYers…

We recently bought a house built in 1951. We’ve got to fix the mess with the insulation left in our attic by previous owners when they rewired and put in central heat and air ducts. The attic is partially finished off with four rooms in a cross-shaped floor plan. What’s left of the attic is in four triangular-shaped sections in the four corners of the house. The old insulation in these areas was mostly just ripped down from the roof and is either hanging from the rafters, or is lying on the floor (above downstairs ceiling). It’s a horrible mess.

We have questions about the best way to go about repairing this. One of these triangular sections we are thinking of turning into storage, so for that area we figure we need to insulate between the roof rafters as well as the walls of the attic rooms, and put in a floor. For the other sections, we are wondering what would be the most cost effective way to go. Could we put up new rolled insulation on the walls of the rooms, then take the old insulation that’s ripped away and re-use it by stuffing it between the ceiling joists (attic floor), and just leave the areas where it was ripped down from between the rafters empty then seal the area off? Would that achieve the same goal if we are not going to be using that area at all? Or do we need to also put new rolled insulation up between the rafters in those unused areas (a prospect we are not looking forward to)? We are also wondering about using blown insulation between the ceiling joists if re-using the old stuff isn’t feasible. Is it more expensive, or cheaper, than rolled insulation? And is it more, or less, effective than the rolled stuff?

We are, of course, concerned about cost, as well as effectiveness. We aren’t exactly rolling in the bucks after just buying this house, but we need to save energy (and cut down on the utility bills) as well, so we know we've got to bite the bullet and get this done ASAP. We can't afford to hire help, so please keep in mind that it will be two older folks doing all this work, too. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

1. I'am thinking about the air flow= vents

Do you know about venting the roof?
Roll insulation is the best way. You can reuse some of what is there, or all of it. You can buy a box of insulation rods at home depot or builders supply. You push the rods up between the roof trussing 2x6's 4's what ever. The thin rods hold the insulation in place. Fast and easy.

OK ,so check out the ventalation situation in your roffing system ,get to understand that. And roll insulation ,buy the tie rods for the insulation. Fast/easy.

The other way is to staple it.

[Silver Gaia]

2. Thanks for the advice. There are NO vents in the attic currently.

Except for the usual bathroom stuff. I think the holes for the original vents in the attic walls probably became the pretty octagon windows in the remodeled attic rooms. We've looked at roof turbines at Lowe's and Home Depot that start out around $40, and then there's the really nice solar-powered attic vent with a blower we saw at Costco, but that one was a few hundred, so really not feasible at this time. We could probably do the turbines, but the problem is that there are four separate attic sections, so I'm assuming we'd need to put in four turbines, and I'm not sure how that would look from the outside. Kinda funky maybe? Not sure what else we could do for ventilation. Ideas?

I'll look into the insulation rods. Sounds like a good thing.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

3. Well, not seeing it, ,

you can most likely find places to use the existing insulation . It would help to see pictures. There are different ways to vent ,. Are you discribing a hip roof by the way? The floor joyces you can blow it in. You can also rent a blower for that at equipment supply rental, home depot may rent those. You can buy blow in insulation at home depot or lowe's. Do roof top vent exist on the house? How would you exust the fans? The fans at home depot or lowe's are good enough.

Can you post pictures of the problem areas?
When the remodel was done, was a cealing framed in ? Or did they sheet rock the roof trussing or rafters? If a cealing was framed in you vent above that. The soffits outside is another place to vent.Your gutters are attached to the rafter tails and your soffits are the area below the gutters. You put vents in the soffits .The soffits are the end of the run of your roof.Just don't insulate over the vents!

Post some pic's and I'll do what I can to assist!

So, you vent from the roof top, above the cealing or the soffits.

[Silver Gaia]

4. No, I don't think it's a hip roof.

I'll try to get some better pics over the weekend. In the meantime, here's a pic of the front of the house from the original real estate listing:


In this second pic, I've drawn in an approximation of how they framed in the attic room on the front of the house. The center section is the room itself, and the areas to the right and left are the triangular areas I'm talking about that we need to insulate.


Here's a general sketch of what I'm talking about. Red lines are the roof peaks, angled lines are the roof valleys, and the blue lines indicate the walls of the attic rooms (living space). The ceilings of the rooms are full of angles, with very little space between the ceiling and the roof. There is some insulation up there, as far as we can tell, although it may not be much. The yellow spaces on the sketch indicate the areas where we need to repair the insulation.


There is actual access in only one of these areas so we are having to cut through the walls to get in. We knew, from what we could see in the one area we do have access to, that it was probably bad in the other areas, too. After cutting a hole big enough to peek in with a flashlight in the back of a closet in one of the other rooms, our suspicions were confirmed. We need to insulate all the walls of the attic rooms, since they never put any there in the first place, and then repair the insulation, or add new, or whatever, in the remaining unused space.

I hope this helps you to see what I'm talking about a bit better. I'll try to get some pics of inside at least one of these areas and post them this weekend. It's ugly in there!

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

5. Looks like a 9/12 pitch.

yes show the problem areas from the inside and we will get busy.And youwill need to install vents or that roof will bake.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

6. Looks like

to the left and right of the room small square vents will fit. And it would not look bad at all. Opposite end the same .So six vents perhaps. 5"by 6" or 6" by 8" vents ,something like that in dimension. What do you think? Looks like the house is gray or blue gray with white trim so white vents would work well and blend in. Or Spray paint the vents the same color as the house. But if the trim is white white would be fine. I'm thinking aluminum which comes in white ,bronze,brown and black. But than there is unpainted wood vents too. vinyl also. You can also find designer vents in wood. I can't see the soffits that may be another avenue to venture down.

[Silver Gaia]

9. Soffit vents seem like a good idea.

We haven't been able to look from the inside of the attic, but from the outside, the soffits look to be pretty wide and probably easy to work with. I've seen little round louvered vents that are supposed to be for this purpose that are pretty inexpensive. What do you think of those? How many and what size do you think we'd need? The total square footage of the house is supposed to be 1,400 (not including the family room or the remodeled attic), but we're unsure how much of that area is now actually attic that needs to be vented. We probably should try to get a handle on how big each of these spaces actually is, right?

[Silver Gaia]

7. Couple of Pics

I'd forgotten we had these photos until I downloaded some other photos from my camera last night. These two are taken from the hole for the HVAC intake vent (which we had to repair) in the central room, looking into the L-shaped area behind the front porch that is on the front right in the above sketch. Hope this helps some. This is the area where we are thinking of putting in a small storage room, although we've decided to make that a "down-the-road" project, and just concentrate on the insulation and ventilation for now.

The first photo is looking straight in toward the front of the house. On the right in the photo is the back of the wall of the room that goes toward the front of the house. You can see what a mess it is. Some of the other areas are actually much worse.


The second photo is looking back to the left into the area behind the room that goes to the right on the sketch.


We've done some repair to the ductwork since these photos were taken, but more is needed. We're concerned about that, and will deal with it when we do the work up there, too, but right now, we're most concerned about getting advice on the ventilation and insulation.

ETA: The structure of the house is redwood (the structural engineer we hired before buying the house said it was redwood heartwood and "solid gold").

[Silver Gaia]

8. What we're thinking of doing,

right now, is to put new insulation on the walls of the rooms, then take the old insulation from the rafters and put it between the ceiling joists, then add some blow-in insulation on top of that. Home Depot and Lowe's both carry an Energy-Star blow-in insulation and they rent the blower for 20 bucks a day (or free at Home Depot, depending on how much insulation you buy). This seems like it would be the cheapest and easiest route to go. But we're open to suggestions, so please let us know what you think. Thanks so much!

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

10. Ok, so

Your not comfortable with side vents? Is that because you don't think venting on the outside of the house would look nice? I am asking becaues it would seem to be the more easy way about it.

The soffit vents come in different shapes and sizes such as 3"by 8 " as example. You spread those out between the rafter ends. There is no particular number ,you may seperate those at equal distance. For instance look at some houses in your area with roof top vents some have ten or so some less than that.

Lets have some actual measurements starting with the longest straight run from the outside. Show a pic where the rafter tails from the inside go out to the soffits. Can you see daylight from the inside looking out ,you may have to get in there and polk around.

We hope the builder didn't add blockers between the rafters at the outer wall, what is called bird stoppers. If blockers do exist and you want to vent threw the soffits anyway you will have to use a hole saw and drill holes in those blockers, that's if blockers are there. I am thinking in variables , things you run into, that's why pic's are important.

Blow in is good ,roll insulation is best. In this case blow in because of all the obsticles .The old insulation,- just stuff it good and leave no gaps.

In the paint department at home depot or lowe's buy those painters cover all's
made out of terry cloth with hood,- wear it over what you wear to work in and of course wear something under the cover all that is thin , so you don.t sweat so much. The cover alls are about nine bucks each.And latex gloves work well for handeling insulation. That will keep the fibers off of you as much as can be.And paper painters masks as well.And control the sweat because it makes you a magnet to the fibers that are in the insulation.

I have to stop over at the office Saturday afternoon , I'll look a few things up .Of course you know codes very from state to state. The vent situation is really pretty simple and straight forword.

Tell me your thoughts on those outer walls so we can discus venting.

So ya, I like the blow in idea on this one ,it's rather cramped in there, the blow in will cut the time and does the job.

[Silver Gaia]

11. We're not necessarily opposed to the idea of side vents.

In fact, we're thinking that may be the way we have to go. I don't like the idea of putting any vents on the front of the house (yeah, for looks), but on the sides of the house would be OK. As far as we can tell, there's only two places we could actually utilize soffit vents, and that's just not going to get it. Example (added numbers for each area, green lines indicate direction of rafters, purple is area where we could actually put soffit vents):


The left side of the house really isn't visible at all, except from the neighbor's yard. On the right side of the house, it's more visible, and there's an attached garage that starts about 3-4 feet to the front of the roof peak on that side, but we can work around that. So, could you please go into more detail about the side vents you were talking about?

Also, what about the roof vents? Do you have any suggestions there? I've read that ridge vents are best, but not easy to do on an existing roof. Besides that, I've seen and read about the flattish, square and round vents, and the wind turbines (we do get a good amount of wind here) I mentioned before (my next-door neighbor has those on his roof). Any ideas?

We took some measurements and drew it all up on graph paper yesterday. We are getting a figure of about 545 sq. ft. (attic floor) total that needs to be insulated. (Area 1 = 80, Area 2 = 213, Area 3 = 118, Area 4 = 134) Then, there are the attic room walls, which we figured as well, but I don't recall the actual number right now. There seems to be insulation above the ceilings of the rooms (you can see the edges of it in one of the pictures I posted above), so we're mostly needing to do walls there (which is good--getting to those areas would be very difficult).

We are also re-thinking the idea of re-using the old stuff and adding blow-in on top. We've read that the blow-in stuff is messy and could create problems if we ever want to do re-wiring, etc. (which is a possibility down the road), and the old insulation is just so nasty. It would be good to just get rid of it entirely, where we can--although removing it could be a huge problem, too, since there's no way to get it out of the house except by taking it through the house, and that doesn't seem to be a great idea. Not sure what would be best...

Thanks so much for taking the time to advise us. You've helped a lot. Sorry I don't have any more pictures to post yet. I just haven't had time so far. Maybe later today sometime.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

12. Roof vents are not difficult to install

You take a razor knife and and cut out the diameter of the drop in,the shingle, than cut it out. The vent drops in the hole ,you slip the flashing under the tabs ,nail down,a few nails. The is really not a whole lot to it. You can do with 4 to six of those. Roof vents come in different sizes. On side vents of course you want cross ventilation.

You don't need to get rid of the old insulation, it is no there to look nice. You can just re-stuff it. You can add a liner if you feel you must.

As far as the rewire goes ,no matter which type of insulation you use, it will be moved around during the process of rewiring. You can suck the blow in insulation up the same way you blow it in, reverse process.

If you choose to remove the old insulation ( and I wouldn't) you bag it up in plastic bags, tie it ,than transport it. If you were to ask me removing the old insulation is a waste of money .

When I am wiring in such circumstances, I just pull the roll insulation up and throw it out of my way ,than put it back when the wiring is done. On the blow in stuff, I use a small rake and move it around in piles ,than rake it back.

On the r values regarding the insulation remember you are not going to get it all. You are not going to be able to reach every crack and crevice. So you get everywhere you can as best you can. It's about temperature control.

You have some decisions to make, and a budget to operate within. I'll check later on the pics. I hope this helps some. You can do it.

[Silver Gaia]

13. Update

We've decided to use rolled insulation for now, and maybe later add some blow-in IF we feel it's necessary after we assess the situation (when we get a utility bill reflecting the change) with what we're about to do. We bought the insulation along with some side vents to install in the walls, and some of the flat roof vents (4 - one for each section of the attic). We plan to install a couple of roof turbines as well in the biggest areas (2 & 4) that get the most sun later (when we get the gift certificate Home Depot is sending us). We'll let you know how it goes, and will try to post some pics (before and after). We're getting started on the project today. Thanks so much for all your help and advice!

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

14. Good thinking.!

You should be fine with the vents you have. The turbines {may }be over kill.And roll insulation is best.