Introduction to Attic Insulation

When it comes to finding ways to keep your heating and cooling costs down, there is nothing better than installing attic insulation.

This is especially true for those who have problems with their heating bills climbing through the roof.

While attic ventilation is an extremely important issue to address, you want to make sure that the insulation in the attic is up to par or else you will continue to see your heating bills climb at a crazy rate.

With the cost of everything else on the rise and the economy looking a little shaky, it is important to make sure that you are doing everything you can to make sure that you are saving money.

Installing an attic ventilation system will be easy and take you only about a day. The attic insulation could be a different story depending on the current set up of your attic.

If you have a finished attic with drywall or plaster up then you can pick one of two ways to get the insulation in. You can rip out all of the drywall or plaster, install the insulation, and then put the walls back up.

Or you can cut small holes throughout, fill the walls with insulation that is blown in and then simply repair the holes in the wall.

If you are trying to figure out which way is best for you, simply think about the money and the time involved. If your walls in the attic are pretty beat up but it is a big enough space that you could transform it into an active room then you might as well tear out the old walls and install new ones once the attic insulation is properly installed.

But if your attic is nothing more than a crawl space that no one is every really going to see then you may want to cut holes in the walls to blow insulation in, even if the walls are not that pretty to look at.

This is the time to think about pricing though. If you are able to rent the machine to blow the attic insulation in yourself then that is great. But if you are looking at having to hire someone to come out to do it then you will be looking at a project that just doubled in cost.

 For those who have a limited budget and know how to drywall on their own, going the route of ripping out and replacing walls may be the option that makes more financial sense, even if it does mean you are going to be spending a little more time on this particular project.

You need to make sure though, that no matter what you do, that the attic insulation is not left exposed. Too many times, people have done this thinking that they will get back up there later and complete the project but find that they never do.

 Even with an attic ventilation system in place, tiny pieces of that insulation can get into the air. This is not something that you or your family needs to be breathing in as major health problems can occur.

If you have to take a break between installing the insulation and the drywall make sure that you are at least covering the walls with thick and heavy plastic.