Retrofit insulation in Pueblo CO - an older house that finally holds its heat

Most of the calls I get for this start with a drafty back bedroom, a room over the garage that bakes in July, or a power bill that keeps climbing in a house that's had the same few inches up there for decades. The price turns on how much insulation is there now, how easy the attic is to get into, how many gaps we have to close first, which is the air sealing part of the job, and whether the walls need work too. The schedule mostly turns on what we find, because some problems get fixed before anything new goes in. Your own figure comes from the estimate, after I've looked at the space.

We go after the easy wins first, because in most older houses that's where your money does the most. Our crew seals the gaps around can lights, pipes, wires and the attic hatch, since insulation laid over an open hole just has air blowing through it. Then we top up the attic floor with blown-in insulation, loose cellulose or fiberglass blown through a hose, and we carry it all the way to the outer edge of the ceiling while keeping the eave vents clear so the attic keeps breathing. The walls come last, and only if they need it. If you have gas or oil appliances, I'll suggest having them tested before and after we seal, because a tighter house can sometimes pull their exhaust back inside instead of sending it up the flue.

Retrofit work runs into a couple of other jobs. If your ductwork lives in the attic, spray foam insulation can be worth the extra cost, since foam seals the air while it insulates. For most attics, though, sealing the gaps and topping up loose fill gets you there for less, and our attic insulation page covers that job on its own.

Before we start, we find out which building office covers your address, because Pueblo, the county and the Colorado Springs side don't all use the same one. Inside Pueblo, building permits come from the Southern Colorado Building Department, while Pueblo County handles building matters in the unincorporated parts of the county, so a house in Pueblo West goes through the county instead. We check with that office whether your job needs a permit, and if it does, we pull it and line up the inspection.

What we see on jobs here is mostly older houses with a few tired inches of insulation, an unsealed attic hatch and eave vents that got buried the last time someone topped it up. We run into the same attics on jobs in Colorado Springs, and we fix them the same way, seal first and then fill.