Attic air sealing in Clarksville TN - a sealed attic floor under your insulation

Most people call us about a hot room upstairs, a drafty bedroom or a power bill that climbs every season, and air leaking through the ceiling is usually a big part of it. The price comes down to how many large openings we find, how easy the attic is to move around in, and whether old insulation has to be pulled back or hauled out to reach them. The schedule turns on the same things, plus whether you want attic insulation added once the sealing is done, and the on-site estimate is where you get the figure for your house.

We start by looking at what's already up there, how many inches of insulation you have and whether any of it is soaked or full of droppings, because sealing under a bad layer just buries the problem. Then we go after the big openings first, where interior walls tie into the attic floor, around dropped ceilings that leave an open box above the ceiling line, and behind kneewalls, the short walls in a room tucked under the roof. That's where most of the air gets out, so that's where most of our time goes. After that we close the smaller gaps around pipes, wires, can lights and the hatch with caulk or foam, keep the eave vents clear so the attic still breathes, and use sheet metal instead of foam around a hot flue. If you've got gas appliances, plan on having the venting checked once we're done, for the reason in the questions below.

Sealing is usually half the job. Once the attic floor is tight, retrofit insulation brings an older house's attic up to depth, and when your ductwork runs through the attic, spray foam insulation can seal and insulate in one pass.

Before work starts we find out whether your address falls under the city or the county and what that office wants. The City of Clarksville requires plumbing, mechanical and gas permits to be pulled by a properly licensed contractor, and its permit list names that work, not attic air sealing, so the list alone doesn't settle whether your job needs one. We ask, and when a permit is needed for our part of the job, we take care of it. The city also requires contractors working inside city limits to register with it, and any project valued at $25,000 or more has to be done by a contractor licensed by the State of Tennessee. If a gas vent turns out to need work, that belongs to another trade, and we'll tell you so.

A lot of the houses we get into around here are older, often with a finished room over the garage or a bonus room with kneewalls, and the insulation was laid right over gaps nobody sealed. We see the same thing on jobs in Oak Grove and Pleasant View, so the first trip up the ladder is mostly about finding the big openings before we touch anything else.