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Good News at Home
is our newsletter to customers and other interested persons. The newsletter will include tips on home buying and home maintenance and feature a photo or drawing of a topic of importance for the season.
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Click here to read the newsletter for February 2012
Our topic this month is heating system maintenance. Our tips can help reduce operating costs and extend the life of your equipment. Energy conservation is the most cost effective source of alternative energy.
January 2012
Happy New Year! Our customers helped make 2011 our best year since 2006. Thank You! We look forward to a productive and satisfying 2012.
Winter is upon us even though it hasn’t been cold and snowy like last winter. This mild winter weather makes it easy to forget the ice dam trouble so many home owners experienced last winter. If your house had ice dams last year and you have not improved the attic insulation in you house, here are some tips.
If your house was built before 1985, it probably has unsealed penetrations from the interior partitions, light fixtures, fans and other ceiling mounted equipment. These penetrations leak warm humid indoor air into the attic and are a major factor in causing ice dams. These unsealed penetrations are known as attic bypasses. Most insulation does not seal these penetrations. Adding insulation to the attic will not seal the leaks. Worse, adding insulation WITHOUT sealing the air leaks will greatly increase the potential for a different moisture problem in the attic: CONDENSATION. Adding insulation without sealing the air leaks will lower the temperature of the attic and the roof sheathing. Any moisture escaping from the house to the attic will have a higher potential form frost on the underside of the roof sheathing. This frost melts into the sheathing during sunny days, leading to water damage to the sheathing and if condensation is frequent, mold will also grow on the sheathing.
How do you know if the attic bypasses are sealed? Several visible clues can indicate the presence of the air leaks. Look in the attic using a bright light on a below freezing day, either early in the morning or in the evening at least 2 hours after sundown. If you see frost on the roof sheathing you can be certain that there are air leaks into the attic. Another clue which may be visible at any time is the presence of two different types of insulation. Carefully examine insulation near the hatch. If there is more than one type of insulation there is a high potential that the attic was re-insulated without sealing the air leaks. Another method is to carefully check around the plumbing vent pipes which rise into the attic. Clear insulation away from the pipe. You may see dirty insulation indicating air flow through the insulation. You may see the actual penetration, often a round pipe passing through a square hole or a hole much larger than the pipe. Be careful when working in an attic, you must step ONLY on solid framing lumber or walkway boards.
Finding and sealing all the attic bypasses is usually a job for a qualified insulation contractor, especially if the attic is insulated with loose fill or blown insulation. Often it is much easier and more effective to have the old insulation completely removed to permit the installation of a new base layer of spray foam insulation which can quickly seal all the air leaks. About the only situation where old insulation can remain in place is when the insulation is fiberglass batts or blankets six inches thick or less. That type of insulation can easily by lifted back to permit sealing the bypasses and re-installed then covered with additional insulation.
One type of attic bypass common to homes built in the 1980’s and 1990’s is the unsealed recessed light fixture. The housing of these lights often has numerous holes and slots. Even if the light is rated IC which means it is suitable for contact with insulation, these lights leak warm air into the attic even when the light is off. The typical remedy for these lights is to temporarily remove the insulation from around the light and install an insulated air tight box over the light. Seal the box to the ceiling, and recover the box with the insulation.
The thing to remember about the remedy for ice dams is that the MAIN benefit is ENERGY SAVINGS. A proper attic insulation retrofit, even if it involves removal of the existing insulation, will usually save enough fuel, for both heating and cooling to pay for the cost of the work in a few years. See a qualified insulation firm for a proposal once you have had us determine the current condition in the attic. We can use IR Thermography to help find the air leaks and hot spots.
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