After our Home Energy Audit by The Building Doctors we got back an 11 page Estimate Tool outlining all the recommended insulation and envelope air sealing improvements with all the details of materials, breakdowns of the work to be performed and their costs.

It didn’t take us long to decide to have all of it done to change our 1948 home’s climate address to deal with the higher temperatures and extreme weather that are here to stay and going to get worse.

Speaking of staying, I know I’m rolling the dice in my mid-60s with planning ahead for the next 20 years but the immediate improvements in our home’s comfort level and our ability to terminate our use of gas are worth it. We love where we live and have no intention of ever leaving.

The post shell upgrade results show the difference in numbers. But my wife and I can tell you after 11 months of living with the changes we easily FEEL the difference.

Here’s how the attic looked before being sealed and insulated. It took me months to move all the cartons that had been previously stored there.

The Building Doctors did a great job protecting our interior while they were working inside.

Here’s how the attic turned out. It was a lot more work than just pumping in the loose-fill R-38 cellulose as you can see in the video. Wrapping each of 5 Solatubes in heavy insulation was part of it.

We replaced 20 can lights, added some new ones, added exhaust fans to both bathrooms and eliminated a drop ceiling so we didn’t need to fill that empty space with insulation

To insulate all our exterior walls, which were empty of any insulation, holes were strategically drilled around interior wood framing and fire breaks.

This technique is called “drill and fill” and dense packing the insulation, to compress the fiberglass beyond its natural density, which eliminates future settling of the insulation and air pockets from forming in the wall. This insulates our walls to an R-15 value.

Dense packing walls also reduces the air movement within the walls.
and helps in the event of a fire because fire needs air as its fuel. Dense packing also helps with noise reduction, because sound waves can no longer bounce around as much inside the walls.

The fiberglass insulation was pumped into the walls using the Big Blue Box and then through long tubes.

After the dense packing is complete the holes are sealed and then re-stuccoed to match the original texture.

Meanwhile under the house the hot water pipes were insulated with foam and fiberglass insulation batts were installed under the floor boards.

I repainted our famous orange–colored house myself.

You’d never know it looked like Swiss cheese a week earlier.

We didn’t just feel the results, infrared readings and a new blower door test quantified the difference.

Almost a year later and we’re more comfortable, spending less money on heating and cooling and happy I met Dan Thomson and The Building Doctors all those years ago. They exceeded our expectations in so many ways.

If you’re out of the Building Doctors territory, look for a company with the same credentials, especially Building Performance Institute certification.

Next up – Here’s what we did about our gas range/oven.