Insulating Old Rental Property - Part 1

[Racine Insulation]

This home was built around 1885. It had at least 4 editions over the last125 years. Amazingly, there was not an ounce of insulation in the walls or attic. Previous home owners probably could not insulate the attics because there were no access panels cut, anywhere. We cut two access areas in closets and one in a ceiling. Because of all of the additions to this home we needed three openings to access the different attic areas.

Older homes were often built with a balloon type construction. This means the joists between the first and second floor are continuous with the exterior wall cavities. You can see an example of how bad balloon construction can make an insulation job here:

Whenever you find 2x4s sticking up into your attic you can expect to find an interior wall with no top plate. This is another type of balloon construction, and these open cavities MUST be closed off and sealed with foam. If the home is a rental property and the wall is wide enough, consider dense packing with cellulose to reduce noise between walls and decrease the space that bugs like roaches may want to live.

We often find the exterior walls on a gabled end are also open to the attic. This was the case on all gable ends in this home and we dense packed these walls with cellulose from the attic using a 1 1/4" vinyl hose. This saved a lot of drilling from the outside.

[GingerLee]

How much does that kind of job cost? I live in Montana and have an old home that has heat costs through the roof.

[Racine Insulation]

Cost is largely dependent on the difficulty with the job. Cutting holes in ceilings and walls to access attics greatly increases the labor, and cost.

We can dense pack a 1,000 sq-ft ranch (vinyl siding) for about $1,300.

We can do the attic for about $650 with Level 1 air sealing.

A 300 sq-ft crawl spaces with 2# foam and foundation/rim joist coverage of about 150 sq-ft cost about $500

The house in the video cost about $4,500 because of all of the complications.