Wall insulation in Pueblo CO - filled walls without tearing out drywall

Most wall calls start with a room that never warms up, a wall that's cold to the touch in January or a power bill that climbs every winter. In plenty of older houses there's nothing in those walls but air, and the attic insulation can only do so much while the walls stay empty. The price moves with how much wall we're filling, what your siding is made of, how the walls are built and whether shelves or cabinets are in the way, and the schedule mostly turns on your siding plans and whether a permit is needed. You'll get your own number after I've seen the walls in person, because a guess from the driveway isn't worth much.

We start by figuring out what each wall is made of, what's already in it and which side we can get into, because your siding usually decides whether the holes go outside or in. If what's in there is wet or full of mouse nests, we deal with that first, since new fill on top of an old problem just hides it and the mouse doesn't deserve the upgrade. Then our crew covers plants and floors, drills into each cavity between the studs, dense packs it until it won't take any more, and plugs and patches every hole before we clean up. If new siding is already on the way, that's the easiest time to fill the walls, and the questions below cover how that works.

Full walls still leak air at outlets, top plates and the joints where the walls meet the attic and floor, so we often pair the wall work with air sealing services to close those gaps. If your complaint is cold floors more than cold walls, basement insulation on the foundation usually helps more than anything we put upstairs.

Who issues a permit depends on where your house sits. Inside Pueblo city limits and in Boone it's the Southern Colorado Building Department, and outside them it's the Pueblo County Building Division, generally for work that modifies a building's structure. That doesn't settle whether drilling and filling your walls needs one, so before we start we find out which office covers your address, since Pueblo, the county and the Colorado Springs side don't all use the same one. If the job needs a permit, we pull it and line up the inspection.

A lot of older Pueblo houses have plaster inside and a mix of wood, stucco and brick outside, sometimes all three after a few additions, so I look at every wall before we pick where to drill. Newer houses in Pueblo West and up in Colorado Springs usually came with something in the walls, so the calls there are more often about an addition or the room over the garage that got finished without any.