Dense Pack Cellulose Insulation in Ann Arbor, MI

From the Outside, This House Looked Perfect. Inside the Walls Was a Different Story.
When people think about insulation, they usually picture the attic.
That wasn’t where this project started.
The homeowner in Ann Arbor had been chasing comfort issues for a while. Certain rooms never seemed to feel quite right, even though everything else in the house looked fine.
There weren’t any obvious drafts.
Nothing that pointed to one big problem.
Sometimes that’s what makes these jobs interesting.
The walls were hiding the problem
Once we started checking things over, we found two exterior walls that had very little insulation left in them.
Some wall cavities were nearly empty.
Others had insulation, but not enough to do much anymore.
The walls were framed with 2×4 construction, so there wasn’t a lot of room to begin with. If those cavities aren’t properly filled, outside temperatures don’t have much trouble finding their way into the house.
You can’t see that standing in the living room.
But you definitely feel it.
Nobody wanted to tear open finished walls
That was one of the first questions.
“Were the walls going to have to come apart?”
No.
That’s one of the nice things about dense-pack cellulose.
We drilled small access holes through the exterior siding, filled each wall cavity with dense-pack cellulose insulation, and packed it to approximately R-13. Once everything was complete, we sealed each opening with matching plugs.
The drywall inside the home stayed exactly where it was.
No patching.
No repainting.
No turning the living room into a construction zone.
There’s more going on than just insulation
People hear R-13 and immediately think about energy savings.
That’s part of it.
But filling empty wall cavities also helps reduce unwanted air movement through the walls. It can improve overall comfort from room to room, and many homeowners notice the house becomes a little quieter afterward too.
That’s one of those benefits people don’t always expect.
Sometimes the best upgrades are the ones you never see
When we finished, the house looked exactly like it had when we arrived.
No one driving by would know anything had changed.
The difference was inside the walls.
Those two exterior walls were now fully insulated instead of leaving empty spaces for outside temperatures to work against.
Projects like this don’t usually get much attention because there isn’t a dramatic before-and-after picture.
But they’re often the ones homeowners appreciate the most once the weather changes.
If parts of your home always seem harder to heat or cool than the rest of the house, the problem may not be your HVAC system at all.
Sometimes the answer is already hiding inside the walls.

Call Koala Insulation of Greater Ann Arbor or visit our website for a FREE evaluation!