Insulation 2.0 - 3 Steps to Re-Insulate

You'll have a huge roof, well, we have one between the registers, look at this one, your roof, oh yeah, that's the clean roof to heat right there. Well, Ken, up here, we have a traditional upflow unit, the returns at the bottom, the unit will be in a closet, but look at this, we have a direct connection to the attic, nothing interesting is happening out there and like Result, tons of mold around the sheetrock in this closet and especially around the cabinet, a bit the duct board. When we do a demonstration here, we will find serious blackness in this house and then the hole in the attic is gone. here, let's see if you can catch that, let's see how hot that thing is.

Oh yeah, look not only is it a good place to warm up, you know that every time we train contractors. We really want an

insulate

d hatch to cover something you can tighten or tighten. Yes, get that stamp around you think. appliances when the appliance changed was when we put the magnetic seal on the vacuum, yeah, then all of a sudden we were able to go from five inches of

insulation

to one and the compressors got smaller, we used less energy but our food stayed better, that that's all. What we need to do is plug these big holes, take care of the little ones, replace what's up there, you know what happens with lack of

insulation

, let's take a look at a website because when you have it, if this was a thousand square foot attic, yes We're missing eighty-five square feet of insulation, that means all we have is pretty much, you know, 85 square feet in r1, that's the drywall, yeah, if the rest of that attic is our 30, I think what we'll see when you look at the website, that would reduce that entire attic from our 30 to an R 9.

Wow, let's take a look at the website and give people an idea of ​​how to use it. We'll link it in the description below for sure. In this job, this is actually a project that I'm working on and we're going to change the way the insulation works in this house, but I want to show people if they're going to update this in a more traditional way or with a cost better known. -more effectively than me, where I'm really trying my best to figure out how we could do that, so let's bring in your team who's going to suck a little bit and show people how we can change the air sealing in the line of the attic, let's do it. talk a little bit about safety, there are some unique vacuum cleaners that seem to work very well, who knows what's up there, yeah, electricians throw those pieces of metal in old boxes and stuff, there are nails and stuff like that, we'll absolutely get the setup the vacuum cleaner, we'll talk about it a little bit and let's get some of this stuff out of here.

I mean, look here, let's do it. I like it guys. I'm here with Stephen, one of the owners of True r-. value of insulation Stephen, you and the team did an amazing job today, it's hot and sweaty work getting into the attic isn't it? It's not a fun job, no, it's not right, so while we're talking about this attic air ceiling and then re-insulating first let's talk about that I want to hear from your perspective why it's important to remove all that insulation well the most important thing is that it allows us to seal in the air, yeah, so we can take out that shitty old insulation that's full of crystallized pollen dust, rat feces, all that stuff we breathe, yeah, we can take it out now that your house doesn't have to deal with that poor quality of the interior air and we expose the pipes, yes, the edges, the large holes in the house that are the attic floors. and tell me we already saw something, but give me a list of some of the biggest holes you see, yes the big holes we see are top plates, so the top of the walls inside the house can light up the boots of HVAC and then there.

There are always random drill holes for electrical pipes, everything that they may have used or not used and then there are open channels, so these are voids inside the walls that just don't have sheetrock over them and allow heat and moisture flow to them, yes. We saw a couple there where you had a water heater vent B and you could shine your flashlight and see up to 20 feet under the house and you might not know that's there with the insulation like a bigger one yeah but there's other smaller ones that we always find and you can seal them.

Okay, guys, we talked about why air sealing is important, but I want to give you a visual demonstration now that this house is out. here slab on level construction we have ceiling joists traditional insulation upstairs and I've designed a little test on how to do that what we're going to do is turn the door fan on low and then I have a smoke machine upstairs so I can go ahead and turn on that fan for me if you do. Now we're not making it super loud and that fan is blowing this time so we're pressurizing the house almost like If you had a balloon you were blowing into the balloon and we're looking for how many cracks and leaks there are, Stephens has a fog machine here to us, give us a quick hit on that Stephen so you can see it looks like it. and then all these penetrations in the ceiling here, like this fan, the bathroom fan, all these other outlets, they're probably leaking quite a bit of air, now we've done the insulation, vacuuming upstairs, Steve and his team finished that good job, by the way, and now Let's see if with this fog machine running, the house has positive pressure, if we can go up into the attic and see some of that fog coming out, so join me here, we'll go up through the attic hatch and see . part of me if we can find some of that smoke coming out, so we're in the attic now and those guys with that ceiling fan and the smoke machine are here, so hopefully we'll see that fog coming out of this hole.

There we go, that's perfect, so that's the box, okay Stephen, turn on the machine, oh my goodness, can you see it, yes, can you see that fog coming up my flashlight, help, yes, oh my goodness, look at that What's coming, oh yeah, tons of fog? Going past that is crazy now that we're positively pressurizing the house, which would be similar to the chimney effect in the winter and you can visually see how much smoke is coming out of there, okay guys, let's go to the bathroom and wow, look at that! super leaky, that's a massive source of air leaks, now what else is going to leak air?

Let's see if we can see one, look at that 2x4 over there, which is the top plate for the bedroom and there's another one that separates the bedroom from that family upstairs. In the room space, if we were to actually fog the first floor, we would see air coming in through the top plate, especially where there are wire holes, but next let's look here at this bathroom fan to see if we can see some light coming in there right now. I'm not sure what these cables were doing here. It looks like this could have been an advertisement.

Oh, I hear the smoke machine passing by the bathroom fan. Oh yeah, I can see him arriving early. Can you see all the light if I turn it on? with my flashlight off I see all the light coming around the sides of that super leaky drywall and I also look at the fin right there. Can you see the fin moving? If the rear draft damper isn't working very well and there's tons of fog coming in through there, it's going to There's a lot of fog in here, we won't see very well in a minute, there's going to be a lot of fog in here, but can you see that the backdraft damper is too fancy and now this bathroom wasn't connected to anything, they just had it blowing into the attic? but if I turn off my flashlight for a second I see all the light coming through there anywhere we can see the light it means there's a massive air leak and this right here where there was a massive air leak and then right behind you here You can also turn around look at this where this bee vent came out this is probably for the water heater on the first floor that runs through the entire house look at that big hole right there that is connected throughout the entire house where the water heater is there is a massive air leak and I can actually feel the air coming in there right now so there is no fog in the laundry room you would see that fog coming in there and going up throughout the house .

The point is insulation 2.0, it's not just about insulation, air sealing is super important and I get pushback all the time on my YouTube channel Matt, you are building a house that is too tight, no, we need to build airtight houses to that our insulation works effectively. it has to be airtight, this is that gore-tex jacket for your house, we're sealing the house to the air and then if all of these things are completely sealed to the air, then we can

insulate

the insulation that will have a true r value, that's what I love the name of these guys' company.

True R value. That's really a quick statement, but if you think about it, it's very true. Now we'll show you how to seal the air in this attic. Now we will do it. With two different shapes, we're going to use it with some canned foam and we're going to make it with some closed cell tank foam, so let's grab it guys, y'all, we're on to what I've got here. so we're going to be as quick as we can, what we're looking at is the bottom of the drywall, all the fixtures sucked out, so now we can actually see what the problem areas are and here's a, here we have a top . of the wall transition here, so where the drywall is sprouting, that top plate is a big source of air leaks and look at those cables running through that top plate everywhere the cable goes, it's a chance to get the air out of there now that Ken has his foam kit and we're going to show you the easiest and quickest type of method also the most expensive method that I can use bro now you can prepare this kit and have it ready In advance, there is a little process to prepare it, but as you can see once you prepare it, it goes very quickly.

He's using that closed cell foam on those wall intersections anywhere there's drywall stuck there. He's laying down a good thickness. Now this is closed cell foam insulation, but we're not using it. For insulation purposes, here we are using this to seal out the air. Now another big source of air leaks are built-in suntan lamps. We actually have a lot of built-in cans in this particular house because we're upstairs where the bedrooms are, but we have a lot. of ceiling boxes, which is basically a junction box for where you have ceiling fans, some of the fixtures that are mounted on the ceiling, we'll seal them with this foam and they look good, you can keep it up bro once you make the transition and get this J box over here while we're here I'll hold that light up for you he's got his walking board up here which makes it easier oh yeah look at that good work you'll notice the foam is expanding in place it does quite a bit It's hot and humid here so there won't be any problems with cracking but if we were in Arizona or a really arid climate we'd have to do something about it okay guys so next we'll seal some more wall to panel transitions of plaster here and then.

We're going to show you how to do this with a foam gun, guys, with the true r value, you'll do it with some metal foam guns in just a second, so look at that foam bead that looks really cool. Good job, can you see how easy it is with a kit and can you see how hard it would be if any of that insulation was in the way? The other thing is that once you notice that we are in this place, let me shine the light. Down, look at the end of the beam base and see how there are no baffles at the end of that beam bay.

We need to see that there is insulation that fell into the soffit down there. We'll have to install some deflectors down there. We can keep the insulation from falling into the baffles when this comes out, it bounces around, but that's the basics guys, we have another big type of warping here in the attic that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on. In this particular video, that's the HVAC system that has some transitions from the ground floor, so it really needs to be sealed in this house, but this is actually my real remodel. You can see my series at the link in the description and us.

We're going to change the HVAC, so we're not going to mess with that because that's going to be changed. Now let's switch to the true r value guys and we'll show you how to do it. Quincy will show us how to do it. a phone gun, now Quincy has a foam gun, which will be a less expensive way to do it because those foam kits are quite expensive. You have to be a little more ninja when he uses the foam gun, but look how Quincy did it. This is a lot and that's a pretty big hole that you're filling and again you're filling with low expansion foam.

You could use high expansion foam here, but this low expansion foam is going to be a little more detail oriented and now he's going to do the same thing. I'm going to do those wall transitions, go ahead, Nate, that wall over there, Quincy, where the top plate hits the drywall and then has some wires running through it.there and it will hit and you can see it's a pretty similar process when doing this with the foam kit. he's a little slower, he has to be a little more detail oriented, he's very precise with his gun and he's done this many times so he knows what he's doing, but if you were an amateur trying to do this on your own home, I definitely would.

I recommend the kit, it will be much more expensive to do it but you will get a much better seal than if you tried to do it with a gun. If you're a pro at watching this, guns will be the least expensive way to do it. do it, but this is really important for this insulation 2.0 because now we are sealing all those air leaks between the house in this attic space and now when you come back and read below the space that the installations will give, it is true r- value now again , we're not actually going to do the entire attic in this job because it's actually from my actual remodeling job and so we have a few ways to continue with this particular project before we get to the insulation phase, but in This video I wanted to show you what to do and how to do it so you understand the basics.

To learn more about this process, be sure to visit the ideas website. I'll put a link in the description below. There is good building science training on this process in various places on the web. Alright, Quincy looks great, man. Once you make that last top plate, we'll exit the attic here. Well, I'm sure glad to get out. That attic was hot in there now Ken, we did our air roof there, but I wanted to ask you, since you're an installation dealer, what are the reasons in your mind why someone would want to vacuum up all that old insulation before doing it? that air sealing because technically someone could probably rake around your insulation find all those problems and seal them and rake them properly, you could and there are people who do that, one of the problems is their installers will probably charge you almost the same.

There's a lot to do as they would do it to vacuum it up and a big reason for that is because I have some of the stuff up and I'm not going to ask you to grab this, they can do it, but you'll notice that the fibers are very big, that's the old insulation that is and this is what is called a phenolic binder. Okay, that binder makes everyone itch. I'm not going to do what I'm going to do with this, but this is gritty, you know, it's a little annoying. In my hands, the newer insulation is this type of thing and it's not just the Owens Corning, but any of these newer installations, they will have much smaller fibers so they break down better, have better coverage, but not only is the binder natural.

In other words, skin is like sugar if you walk into our warehouse when we buy a new truck and it smells like freshly baked cookies or caramel corn, yes that might tell you what the binder is, but I'm supposed to say it's natural, so that this will break down better, it has no itchy properties and seems to work much better than the old stuff, it doesn't deposit like the larger fibers did, let's blow on some insulation, can you be ready, ready, let's do it. Talking about how the blower door works and what people could do, how the blower door is used with this process.

Well, first of all we're going to use the blower door and it's what I like to call kind of taking your blood pressure in the house. I make the blower door I see what leaks the house has Are you normal? You know, maybe it's good, sometimes we are surprised and then we see very bad situations. You know, we have to get you to the hospital right now. Situations and then we use that. number when we test, we have a reference number when we test, so it can mean fried, yeah, when it gets there, see what our blower door score is, see how leaky the house is, and then what does it find?

How often you can do in terms of adjusting the house in terms of percentage or dollars, every time we see at least forty percent, so we've seen up to sixty percent and we're very excited about that. Wow, so maybe a house that had a 10 ACH 50, which means a pretty leaky house, you might have to get it down to five ACH and five are modern codes for a new construction in Austin in Austin, Texas, you have to pass with five ACH, yes, we are. I'm glad when we see that yes, so Stephen, some people who see this may be thinking: I want to put foam in my attic to have the best possible, you know, my ducks in my air-conditioned space and then maybe even leave my isolation. you tell someone who is thinking about foaming their attic, foam is the best product we have available for air sealing and insulating an attic, yes, and you are absolutely right, and when we get a call for that and we say yes Yes, we definitely want to do it.

I want to help you with that, but 90% of the time we get there we look up at their attic and guess what's going on with almost every house in Austin that has their gas furnace in the attic or their water heater, your heater of water, yes, yes, and Those older furnaces are natural draft, Vince, so they use the air inside the attic to light the burner. Yes, the poison gas is outside, and if we folded up those attics, those poison gases could get trapped in the house and, I guess, come back out. straight to where you sleep so you find a gas boiler now thanks you don't want to call my guys that's a big mistake yeah and also foam isn't cheap is it?

I mean, we're talking about a pretty expensive price tag. The system and your process here, which I call insulation 2.0, could probably be half the cost, yes, it's almost always half the cost, and I guess you'll get maybe 70 to 80 percent of the benefit, yes, the only thing we are. What you don't benefit from is that the ductwork and air conditioning equipment is inside the conditioned space and that's great, but if we're doing a good job on the air roof and insulation, that's less effective in the house, yeah , we will get the easiest fruits, yes. Taking care of those big issues first, now let's talk about the cost, everyone wants to know how much this costs.

Give us a range for two things, first of all, I haven't even mentioned this, but you guys also do home performance appraisals and I'm the local ecad specialist, so how much does it cost to do a home performance appraisal and then this isolation 2.0? We're talking about where we're going backwards. Now we're sealing off the air. We are putting in new insulation. Tell me the price range. For both, in today's market, there are always offers for free energy audits. I try to keep people away from those. Yes, yes, it is usually a salesperson who has a particular product that they want to sell you, so you go to any energy or home audit.

For testing, you want someone to actually put tools into testing equipment in the house and give you some scientific numbers, so we see in Austin around 250 on the low end of how much you want to test, how bad the house is. and probably you. We're going to spend several hundred, yes, if not twelve thousand dollars for a good time, how about this insulation 2.0? We liked about 900 square feet in that secondary attic. audience here, but can you give us a general outline at no cost nationwide? It's okay four to six dollars per square foot and that will allow you to vacuum all the air sealing that we're talking about and then a low Reba with baffles and a whole send, yeah, yeah, so everything that's required by code, the three services and tests so typically covering everything, they have good things.

Now what I like about these guys, to conclude, is that we see a lot of promise in energy savings. The other day I saw a window replacement ad for a cheap vinyl window. Oh, 40% off your energy bill by changing your windows. No, that is not like that. There is no way to change your windows and do nothing else. You'll save 40 percent of January bills, on the other hand, if we did isolation 2.0, I think 40% is probably pretty realistic, right? Yes, it is realistic. I avoid selling according to the Senate, yes, energy efficiency for me is a symptom.

I have a bigger problem if you are worried about energy efficiency or your bills are very high, there is something else going on in the house and that is usually an air leak and poor insulation, possibly a malfunctioning HVAC system and many times I guess They call you because there are people who have a bedroom. that's really uncomfortable and very hot it smells funny why it smells so bad in here it's because your attic has rats and they were exterminated but all that garbage is in your attic and whatever is in your attic is probably in your house right yeah .

I always have that as a question in my home assessments and people look at me funny, but it's very important to me, that's enough again, another symptom. I know there is a problem if there are strange smells, yes, but yes, uncomfortable rooms, strange smells, all of those are and then. Problems with indoor air quality, so maybe children with asthma allergies. Things like that. This is an excellent option. Can I get a big difference? It's even a great job, brother. I really appreciate it guys, you can communicate everything with a true R value. You are a local Austin contractor, but if you are all over the country, there are other people like even in the US and around the world that are doing this type of job, but you need to know what to ask for and you also need to know how to pay for it correctly because if you just call it an insulation, you have a repository in your attic, you're not going to get those benefits going back to that original analogy of the skier going down the hill just adding another sweater, no We are going to do it, we need to do that air sealing, it is vitally important. major guys, big thanks to Stephen and his team, they totally killed it here and full disclosure he did the free blowjob so I wanted you to know that he gave me a free blowjob from the attic in this and I really appreciate it but I thought that it was really important to use this house that I've been remodeling to talk about this because we talk about air sitting all the time and I always get criticism in the comments about how I'm doing. sealing my house is too airtight and I have to say no that is not right we need to seal our houses better and do a better job and this house is a great example of this homeowner who has lived here for decades in a terribly uncomfortable house with enormous energy. massive bills and issues that were covered with a six or four inch layer of insulation that they couldn't see, so being able to expose that and show it was vital anyway if you're not a subscriber hit the subscribe button below guys, talk later. about all kinds of things on this channel building science indoor air quality how to do it right best practices and products of course hit the subscribe button below on tuesdays and fridays there are new videos otherwise they are fake and twitter instagram see you next time at the construction show