Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, it’s pretty safe to say that we New Englanders shouldn’t expect to be hit with a spell of warm weather anytime soon. It’s time to bundle up, put a fire in the fireplace, and insulate your home.
People can be apprehensive when they hear that it is time to insulate, but their hesitation comes from not knowing the specifics on the insulation process. When they hear “insulation,” they think that it involves completely renovating their home and is a highly intrusive process. Contrary to this belief, insulating a home can be an easy process, and can even take less than a day to complete (depending on the site being insulated).
Attic insulation is one of the most effective and efficient places to install insulation; it is also one of the easiest. With loose fill cellulose insulation, all we need is access to your attic through a window, vent, stairway, or attic hatch.
We use special tools to blow the cellulose into the attic. Cellulose insulation is made from recycled papers, so you don’t need to worry about the blown insulation emitting any toxic fumes when it is installed. Because of this, you don’t even need to leave your home during installation. The process will not interrupt your daily life, and will not make a mess of your home.
Insulating your walls requires a different process, but still allows you to stay in your home during the installation. We typically gain access to the walls from your home’s exterior by temporarily removing a band of siding. Then we drill a hole through the exterior sheathing. The hole is the perfect size for a tube that blows in the insulation. After the insulation is tightly packed, the hole is patched back up and the siding is replaced. Like attic insulation, wall insulation is a clean process and does not depend on you altering your plans at home.
If you’re renovating or building a new addition, the process of installing loose fill cellulose is slightly different than installing it in a completed home. We enclose the interior walls with thin, mesh-like webbing that cases the cellulose insulation inside of your walls. We spray the insulation within the webbing’s barrier and building carries on, uninterrupted.
Loose fill cellulose insulation does not only help conserve energy in your home and save you money by doing so, it has more green qualities. Made from mostly recycled materials, the production of cellulose insulation does not leave a big footprint on the environment. The lesser-known fact about blown cellulose insulation is that no insulation is wasted. When we over-spray an area, the excess insulation is returned to the blowing machine through a vacuum hose. The insulation is then installed in another place in your home.
Now that you know the insulation process is not intrusive and is highly effective, what will you do to stay warm this winter? You can crank up your heat, only to lose it all through your un-insulated home—or you can choose the more comfortable, energy efficient option: insulate.
