Cold Floors, Drafts and High Energy Bills. This Naperville Crawl Space Wasn’t Helping

This Naperville homeowner was dealing with a few things that usually get your attention pretty quickly.

Cold floors.

Drafts.

And energy bills that were higher than they wanted them to be.

They already had batt insulation in the crawl space, but it was old and there wasn’t enough of it.

At that point, having insulation down there wasn’t really the same thing as having insulation that was doing its job.

So, our crew at Koala Insulation of Chicago Western Suburbs went in to take care of it.

The Old Batts Needed to Go

We started by removing the existing batt insulation.

Once fiberglass batts get old, damaged or start falling away from where they’re supposed to be, you can end up with gaps all over the place.

And in a crawl space, those gaps matter.

The homeowner was already feeling cold floors and drafts upstairs. We didn’t want to stuff more fiberglass around the old material and hope for the best.

We pulled it out.

That gave us a clean look at the exterior walls and rim joists and let us get to the areas we actually wanted to seal.

We Went Back With Spray Foam

Instead of replacing the old batts with more batts, we used spray foam insulation.

We sprayed the exterior crawl space walls and the rim joists.

The rim joists are one of those areas we pay a lot of attention to because there can be plenty of little gaps around the framing where outside air finds its way in.

Spray foam lets us get into those spaces while insulating at the same time.

That’s a big difference from simply placing a piece of fiberglass in the cavity.

For this house, we wanted a better seal around the crawl space and a better barrier between those cold exterior conditions and the floors above.

Nobody Likes Cold Floors in a Naperville Winter

You can turn the thermostat up.

But if cold air is finding its way through the crawl space and the floors above it are cold, you’re still probably going to notice.

And now your heating system is working harder too.

That’s why this job wasn’t just about making the crawl space look better.

The homeowner wanted to address what they were actually feeling inside the house.

Cold floors and drafts were the obvious signs.

The high energy bills weren’t exactly a bonus either.

Getting the old insulation out and sealing the crawl space with spray foam gave us a way to tackle those areas directly.

The Homeowner Was Pretty Happy With the Crew

After the job, the homeowner left us a great review.

They said the Koala team did a “phenomenal job insulating our crawl space.”

They also specifically mentioned that we removed the old insulation, applied the foam and cleaned everything thoroughly.

And John, Damien and the rest of the crew got a shout-out too.

We appreciate that.

Crawl space work isn’t exactly glamorous, but when cold floors and drafts are coming from underneath your home, it’s worth crawling down there and figuring out why.

This Naperville crawl space had old batt insulation that wasn’t getting the job done anymore.

Now it has spray foam on the exterior walls and rim joists instead.

Much better.

Call Koala Insulation of Chicago Western Suburbs or visit our website for a FREE evaluation!