Blown-in insulation in Pueblo CO - an attic that's sealed, level and still breathing

Most people call Precision Pueblo Spray Foam Insulation because the upstairs is hot, the room over the garage is cold or the power bill keeps climbing. When I go up, there's usually a few settled inches and a lot of gaps around lights, pipes and the hatch. We're based in Pueblo and work from Pueblo West up to Colorado Springs and plenty of the cities around them. The price turns on how big the attic is, how many inches are already up there, how much sealing the ceiling needs and whether old material has to come out first. The schedule mostly turns on that last part and on any furnace or water heater work that has to happen before we start. We look at the space before we put a price on anything, so the estimate is where you get your own number.

First I go up and see what's there, how many inches, what kind and whether it's dry and clean. Then our crew does the air sealing, closing the gaps around can lights, pipes, wires and the hatch, because loose fill laid over a draft just has air blowing through it. We set baffles at the eaves, stiff chutes that hold the insulation back from the vents, so the attic keeps breathing and moisture doesn't collect in the framing. Then we blow it level from one edge of the ceiling to the other, because the edges over your outside walls are where most jobs come up thin and where the cold gets in. Cellulose or fiberglass mostly comes down to price against how much it settles, and we'll tell you which we'd pick for your attic.

If what's up there now is soaked, matted or full of droppings, we take it out first with insulation removal, because new material on top of a bad layer keeps the problem and the smell. The mice rarely leave a forwarding address. Foam costs more and seals air while it insulates, so it earns its price when your ductwork lives in the attic. Otherwise, sealing the gaps and topping up with loose fill usually wins. When the attic is only part of why the house is uncomfortable, our home insulation work looks at where else it's losing heat.

In the city of Pueblo, building permits come from the Southern Colorado Building Department. Whether a blown-in attic job at your house needs one is something we check rather than guess, and if it does, we pull the permit and line up the inspection.

What we see most around here is older houses with a few inches that settled flat years ago, can lights punched through the ceiling and eave vents half buried under whatever went in last time. Those buried vents are the main reason the baffles go in before anything else gets blown. Plenty of these houses also have a furnace or water heater venting up a chimney, so I look at those on the first visit too. We run into the same mix on jobs in Pueblo West and Fountain, and we do the work the same way there.