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Insulation

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osugrad21

osugrad21

Capo Regime
Staff member
Just got a beast of an electric bill for the past 37 days...its been extremely hot, but not this bad.

Anyway, I talked to the previous owners of my house and they said their bill was in the same neighborhood during the summer.

That leads me to believe the insulation has to be subpar...

I need to contact my electric company for an energy audit, but does anyone have any advice or experience in insulating a home?
 
RU - 486 I think it's called... the pink stuff. Put it up on every exterior wall you have. Of course, this will require getting behind the drywall, which you probably don't want to do, but I'm not familiar with any other way to do it.

If you're losing heat/Cool thru your ceiling, you can easily lay down insulation in the attic. They also blow insulation in (looks like little insulation maggots), though I've never done that or had it done.

Do you have a basement? If it's unfinished you can easily look and see, a lot of times there will be a space between the ceiling in the basement and the 1st floor floor where you could toss some insulation in as well (on the exterior wall, not the ceiling/floor, I mean)
 
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What kind of siding do you have? My parents first house had wood siding so my dad put an inch of foam insulation outside of that and vinyl siding on top, which seamed to help. if you already have vinyl siding it would seam that you would have better insulation, but you could always take off the siding, throw on a layer of insulation, and put the siding back on top. You also might want to check your windows and doors to see what your seals are like. The windows in my house aren't bad, but our doors leak air really bad. If your windows are really old it might save you in the long run to replace them. Our worst electric bill was $130 for August. We had a gas bill for $200 last winter sometime when the furnace ran pretty much the whole month. I'm looking forward to a month or 2 of low bills before winter hits again.
 
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exhawg;610705; said:
What kind of siding do you have? My parents first house had wood siding so my dad put an inch of foam insulation outside of that and vinyl siding on top, which seamed to help. if you already have vinyl siding it would seam that you would have better insulation, but you could always take off the siding, throw on a layer of insulation, and put the siding back on top. You also might want to check your windows and doors to see what your seals are like. The windows in my house aren't bad, but our doors leak air really bad. If your windows are really old it might save you in the long run to replace them. Our worst electric bill was $130 for August. We had a gas bill for $200 last winter sometime when the furnace ran pretty much the whole month. I'm looking forward to a month or 2 of low bills before winter hits again.
Click to expand...


House is mostly brick...

Anyone ever had an energy audit done?
 
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Just make sure you let someone else do it. In high school - one of the jobs I had was laying insulation in old houses. W/o question one of THE worst jobs on the planet. Dust and insulation in your lungs, black boogers when you blow your nose, insulation in your hands, arms, neck, aching back from bending over, etc. Couldnt pay me enough to do that now. No joke - that job was one of the reasons I worked so hard in school.
 
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The house I lived in growing up had some really old blown insulation in it. We remodeled almost every room in the house with my four sisters and I being the slave labor.

Blown insulation is the WORST thing to have in your home if you plan to do any remodeling. Like NewYorkBuck said, you have the stuff in your nose, lungs, etc. I actually had one of my eyes swell up from the stuff (got me out of tearing out kitchen walls at least). NASTY Stuff!!
 
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You can never have too much insulation!
Insulation is relatively cheap and you will most certainly get your money back in energy savings rather quickly.

If your house is 20-25 years old your windows and doors are probably useless as insulation. Seals in windows and doors dry out and shrink leaving gaps. Replace them. It will be relatively expensive, but it doesn't make sense to insulate walls and have windows that leak energy.

With brick houses you may have to use foam sheets or blown foam insulation. You may be limited in what you can do.
But, chances are you still can have great energy savings by replacing windows and doors which have lost their seal!
 
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