Tips on Home Insulation

Energy costs for home heating are terrible these days. This article is going to describe a type of insulation that I believe superior to everything else out there. I am speaking about "blown in " insulation. This is shredded waste material like newspapers and cloth that is blown into the wall space between the dry wall and outer wall.

It's quite easy to do if you have an assistant. First consult with your hardware dealer as to how many bags of insulation you will need. He will want to know the square footage of your home. Keep in mind also that you will want to get enough bags of insulation to enable you to lay down anywhere from four to six inches of insulation in the attic as well.

The hardware staff at the store will set you up with everything you will need. The rental machine is essentially a vacuum cleaner that has been reversed in it's configuration so that it will blow the insulation out and through a long 4 inch plastic hose. It has an open hopper at the top that you keep filled with the insulation. There is an agitator in the bottom which breaks up clumps of insulation so the blower motor can force it out and down the tube. This is why you will need an assistant. The hose can be anywhere from 40 to 100 feet long, so you can place the blower outside and still be able to reach all areas of your home.

The actual process is very easy. You drag this hose up into the attic and while your assistant is dropping insulation material into the hopper you are slowly building a layer of insulation up on the floor of your attic. Begin at the farthest point away from you entry so you can back towards it as you go. You don't want to paint yourself into a corner as it were.

Once you have finished in the attic it is time to do the walls. There are two methods of doing this on a finished house. You need to equip your self with a heavy duty drill and a one inch auger or wood hole bit. Your hardware staff at the store will sell you plastic plugs that will fill these holes for you once the insulation is in. There is also an adapter that fits onto the end of the hose that will reduce the four inch opening to a one inch. You should drill your holes so that the lower most is just lower than the center of the wall. And the uppermost is just lower than the ceiling. Most walls have a stud running cross ways and you want to get above and below this stud on each piece of wall board. And keep in mind you need only work on exterior walls. And on the end of your hose is a switch you can use to shut off the blower motor when your hole is full and you want to move over or up or down.

This is an outstanding form of insulation in that it does more than just insulate. Some versions of it have tiny metal filings that will repel rodents if they try to chew into it. Any form of this insulation is also a fantastic sound proofer. This material will certainly save you money and will pay for itself many times over in the coming years. It will also increase the value of a home being sold as well when you point out the energy savings.

This article has concerned itself with insulating an existing home but the same material can surely be used in new construction as well. By placing the insulation behind a plastic barrier before the dry wall is put in place, you don't have to use any plastic plugs.

No doubt there are few people who want to mar their walls with inch diameter plastic plugs even if it does mean savings in energy costs. For these folks there is an answer. The plugs are only temporary. Put in place until you can complete the job. Once done with the insulating you only need to get some wall board and cut out a number of patch plugs for the wall. This plug replaces the plastic plug but is cut in such a manner that it almost fades into the wall. The key is that the only gypsum left on this piece of wall board is a one inch circle on the back. This one inch circle fits into the one inch hole and since this is the only gypsum left on the paper, which is about two inches square, the paper itself is able to be pasted right to the wall and later mudded, sanded and painted to match the rest of the room. Not quite, but almost invisible. And well worth the effort when you see that energy bill drop like a rock.

I expect there will be some who may ask, why not just peel the paper off of the gypsum board and use the paper all by itself. Well, you can, this is a much easier and faster method too. However, if you have young children, you may find that their natural curiosity may lead to you finding finger sized holes all over the place. Best to have something behind that paper in this instance.