Before & After Photos

This homeowner has been experiencing high energy bills and uncomfortable rooms throughout their home. They had our advisor assess their whole home for areas to help address these concerns. In the attic we found that the existing blown in fiberglass barely filled the floor joists in some areas, and offered little resistance to heat transfer between the attic and living space. A lack of air sealing along top plates and utility penetrations also allowed conditioned air to escape into the unconditioned attic. 

The solution was to remove the existing insulation allowing us to access all of the top plates and utility penetrations for air sealing then blow in a new blanket of R-49 Cellulose. This will help the homeowner reduce conditioned air loss and heat transfer between the attic and their living space. That means lower energy bills and more comfortable rooms! 

This Williamsburg, VA homeowner has been a lot of heat exchange between their knee wall spaces and the rooms on the other side of the knee wall. This leaves them with rooms that they can't cool down in the summer and that is cold and drafty in the winter. The spaces are also home to ductwork which is impacted by the extreme temperatures making it even harder to heat and cool the living space. 

We applied closed cell spray foam to the attic rafters and gable ends of the knee wall spaces. This will help with the heat radiating through the roof and heating the area up. This will protect the ductwork from extreme temperatures as well, leaving the homeowner with more comfortable rooms. 

Poorly insulated knee wall spaces leave homeowners experiencing cold, drafty rooms in the winter and hot rooms they can never seem to cool down in the summer. Often, the only protection between a knee wall space and the living space is fiberglass insulation in the knee wall. However, it's ineffective because it's almost never closed in on all sides, provides no air sealing, and when knee wall spaces are home to ductwork, it doesn't help protect the ductwork from extreme temperatures. 

In these cases, we insulate the attic rafters and gable ends of the knee wall space with closed-cell insulation.  This helps to reduce the extreme conditions in the knee wall space that impact the living space making it uncomfortable by reducing the conditioned air loss from the living space to the unconditioned attic knee wall space and the heat transfer from the attic space into the living space. 

Moving the crawl space insulation from between the floor joists to the foundation walls extends the thermal boundary of the home to the floor of the crawl space. Along with insulating the rim and band, this helps to reduce drafts and cold floors. 

Foam Board is installed by mechanically attaching it to the foundation walls leaving a viewing strip at the top of the foundation wall per building code for termite inspections. All seams of the foam board are sealed to create an air barrier. 

6-mil vapor barriers are most commonly installed when a home is built, they are lightweight, similar to a standard trash bag, they tear easily, and are simply laid out on the ground. As soon as someone or something moves through the crawl space, the liner is displaced, torn, and bunched up, offering very little protection to the home from the earth's moisture. 

Our homeowner opted to replace this 6mil with a CleanSpace 20-mil vapor barrier. This liner is similar to a pool liner, it's durable enough for service persons to crawl and work under the home, is overlapped and sealed at all seams, wrapped and sealed around all piers, and attached and sealed to the foundation walls about 6 inches above outside grade. It completely seals the crawl space from the earth's moisture, achieving the job vapor barriers are intended to do.