This Bannockburn Home Was Drafty. We Found a Couple Reasons Why.

The homeowner on this Bannockburn job had been noticing drafts throughout the house for a while.

Temperatures weren’t very consistent either. Some areas just didn’t feel the same as others.

He already had an idea of what might be going on.

He knew the crawl space wasn’t insulated and also knew there was a section of the attic that had never really been finished.

So those were the first places we looked.

The Crawl Space Needed to Be Sealed Up

Once we got into the crawl space, there wasn’t much mystery there.

It wasn’t insulated.

In a Northern Illinois home, that’s a pretty big area to leave untreated, especially when you’re already complaining about drafts upstairs.

We decided to use closed-cell spray foam in the crawl space.

The nice thing about closed-cell in an area like this is that we can get right up against all the little spaces around the framing instead of trying to piece insulation around everything.

We sprayed the areas that needed it and sealed things up.

Not a complicated idea.

We just wanted to stop as much unwanted air movement as we could underneath the house.

Then We Went Up to the Attic

There were a few areas up there that needed attention too.

Most of the attic wasn’t the issue. It was the unfinished spots.

And sometimes those smaller areas are exactly where you find the problem.

We used closed-cell spray foam in those sections as well. That let us fill and seal the openings instead of just stuffing insulation into them and hoping for the best.

The homeowner had drafts coming from different areas of the house, so we weren’t going to fix the crawl space and then ignore what we found upstairs.

We took care of both while we were there.

Sometimes You Don’t Need to Redo Everything

That’s what I liked about this job.

We weren’t ripping out an entire attic or trying to sell the homeowner on replacing insulation that was already doing its job.

He told us what he was feeling inside the house.

He told us what he already knew about the crawl space and attic.

We went looking.

And we found areas that made sense to address.

Our crew at Koala Insulation of Northern Illinois sealed the crawl space with closed-cell spray foam and used the same material in those unfinished attic areas.

Now there’s a much better barrier in the places that had basically been left open before.

Hopefully, that means fewer of those annoying drafts and less of the temperature bouncing around that originally got the homeowner looking into the insulation.

It’s a good reminder that when a house feels drafty, the problem isn’t always that you need insulation everywhere.

Sometimes it’s one unfinished crawl space.

Sometimes it’s a few spots in the attic.

In this Bannockburn home, it was a little of both.

Call Koala Insulation of Northern Illinois or visit our website for a FREE evaluation!