Attic and Crawl Space Insulation Upgrade in Ann Arbor, MI

We had a home in Ann Arbor recently where we ended up doing quite a bit of work, both in the attic and underneath the house in the crawl space.

The attic already had cellulose, so we weren’t starting from scratch up there. It just didn’t have enough. The crawl space was a different story. There was old insulation and debris down there that we wanted out before putting anything new in.

It turned into a pretty good top-to-bottom insulation job.

Adding Cellulose to the Attic

We started in the attic and added cellulose over what was already there, bringing it up to approximately R-49.

While we were doing that, we installed new baffles along the soffits. We see insulation pushed up against soffits pretty often, especially in older attics. You need insulation out toward those edges, but you don’t want to bury the airflow coming in from outside either. So, the baffles went in first and then we could get the cellulose where we wanted it.

We also put an insulated cover over the attic hatch.

It doesn’t seem like a big thing, but we see attic hatches all the time with insulation everywhere except right over the opening. Basically, a big bare spot in the attic floor. Easy enough to fix while we’re already up there.

The Crawl Space Needed More Work

Once we got underneath the house, the first thing was getting rid of the old stuff.

We removed the existing insulation along with the debris that had collected in the crawl space. We wanted to get down to a clean starting point before we put anything new back in there.

After that we installed a new vapor barrier across the crawl space floor.

Then we sprayed the rim joists and foundation walls with closed-cell spray foam. The rim joist area is one place we find a lot of little openings where outside air can get in. Spray foam works really well there because we’re not trying to cut pieces of insulation to fit around every little space. The foam gets into those areas and seals them up.

We continued the closed-cell foam down the foundation walls rather than just stopping at the rim joists.

A Much Better Setup for This Ann Arbor Home

There were a lot of individual pieces to this job, but none of them were anything unusual for us.

More cellulose in the attic. Baffles where we needed to keep the soffits open. A cover over the attic hatch. Then downstairs we got rid of the old insulation, cleaned everything out, put down the vapor barrier and spray foamed the foundation walls and rim joists.

That’s really what this house needed.

The homeowner now has more insulation overhead, less opportunity for air to sneak in around the crawl space, and better protection from the moisture and humidity that can come up from underneath the house.

These are the kinds of projects we like doing at Koala Insulation of Greater Ann Arbor because you can address several areas of the house at the same time instead of fixing one spot and ignoring what’s happening somewhere else.

If you’re in Ann Arbor, Brighton or one of the surrounding areas and haven’t looked at your attic or crawl space in a while, call us or visit our website for a FREE evaluation!