In what is quickly becoming my favorite column, the Ask The Sietch fun continues with this very insightful question from Aimee. Do you have a question you would like to Ask The Sietch? Contact us or post your question in the Forums, and we will do our best to answer it.
I’ve looked everywhere with no great answers do you know of a cheap/DIY/green insulation for the attic and basement? Basically I’d like to greenly rig some attic insulation, that won’t kill my lungs, my wallet or the environment. Please help?
Thank you so much for your time,
Amiee
Hi Amiee, first off let me applaud you on your thinking. We all know (or should all know) that conservation is the best energy production. Meaning that the energy you don’t use, is the cheapest to purchase (kind of a zen thing but stick with me). Increasing the insulation in your home is one of the best ways to save money on heating. Insulation also helps with keeping your house cool in the summer. It IS possible to insulate your home, do it yourself, save some cash, and save the earth.
First lets address cost:
My personal view is that you should not be afraid to spend a fair amount of money on your home insulation. But Shane! you say, I am trying not spend a lot of money here! Well look at it like this, if you spend 1000 dollars on insulation that will last lets say 10 years (just to make the math easy) and you save 200 bucks a year on heating and cooling costs you can see that in the end you save 1000 dollars. Would you spend a dollar to get two?
You must also consider the fact that the money you spend on insulating your home will also raise the value of your home if you wish to sell it at some future point. There is also the future cost of energy to think about, if you spend X amount of dollars a month heating and cooling your home, in 5 years from now its a good bet you will be spending X+(a lot) more on those costs (unless you are using a renewable source of energy). We can go even further and add the cost of burning less fossil fuels and the ecological benefit of reducing your energy use. All of these factors make that upfront investment in efficiency that much sweeter. That 1000 bucks might turn out to save you three of four or five thousand dollars in the end (plus cleaner air, less global warming gasses, and a warm (no pun intended) feeling in your heart).
Many people however do not have a lot of disposable income to make these capital improvements to your home, even if in the long run they will save you a bunch of cash. It just so happens that there are several ways to get this money. Here are a few leads to get you started.
The governments energy star program offers up to a $500 tax credit (over two years) for home insulation improvement. They also offer rebates for hybrid cars solar systems and fuel cells. This list by the Department of Energy shows many other tax breaks. (more info on tax breaks here.)
If you can’t get enough from the credits the Housing and Urban Development department also has home improvement loans with low interest rates for up to 25,000 dollars. You may be able to pay the loan payments with the money saved from the wasted energy.
Most banks also offer low interest home equity loans for small home improvement projects.
Now for the insulation itself:
There are two “green” options that come to mind right away.
The first is blow in cellulose insulation. In layman’s terms, recycled newspaper. This is just what you think it is, chopped up newspaper with an anti-insect and anti-fire agent added (both non-toxic) and you just blow it in where you need the insulation.
This stuff is so popular it has its own trade group, pretty interesting website for something devoted to insulation.
There are also DIY options if you don’t want to hire an installer, I found this (from England) not that bad if you don’t have a very large attic to insulate. You just buy the bags, put on a breathing mask (dusty work, not toxic work) and spread it to the thickness on the bag. You should also be able to buy this stuff from your local hardware store, Lowes even has a blower you can rent.
One other option is natural cotton fiber insulation, or recycled jeans. I found a lot of dealers for this stuff, here are but a few.
Ultratouch, these guys seem to be the big boys in the industry. (more info about ultratouch) Also found the Ecowise people, they seem to sell a very similar product. Recovery insulation also seems to sell something similar.
I have actually been part of a team that built a house using this stuff, we used to take naps on it during lunch, never got itchy, never got little fiberglass slivers in our hands, it was really soft. I have also been part of construction projects using blown in cellulose, and it was dusty, but other than that easy to use.
The federal trade commission gives some advice on what to look for when buying insulation. This site claims you can do the whole attic for less than $500 if you do the work yourself. Not bad, they even give you some tips, I am sure the lessons would apply with your chosen type of insulation. This site offers some tips on cellulose installation.
One last thought, basement insulation can be different than attic insulation, moisture concerns may make cellulose insulation not as good an option.
Hope this helps
Shane
Good info, for sure. Thanks, shane, for taking time to research and post!
Cheers.
Indeed, well done.
As anecdotal evidence my dad had insulation blown into his attic many years ago and he was not one to waste a buck :)
Compared to the north, we in Florida are more concerned with keeping the heat out rather than in. The attic insulation protects us from those hot, hot roofs. Since we don’t care about the wieght of snow the roof is relatively close to the ceiling (a very low “pitch”, there are even flat tar roofs – I have no clue how they insulate those).
The roof is good but don’t forget about doors and windows. If you stand in a dark room, look at an outside door, and see light, that is a bad thing. This falls under the cheap/DIY/green savings.
Although this is not a part of your question, single pane windows are another area of rapid payback. Any “modern” home is probably ok but older homes and get a huge benefit from upgrading windows (I noticed how quiet the house was after I changed mine, since sound and air go together I figure I had a winner. Now I wish I had kept utility bills to measure the impact).
Many utility companies have programs to evaluate your home for free. The good ones use something that looks like a radar gun except it measures temperature instead of speed. It’s worth a few minutes of investigation – check a web site or two, make a phone call. Energy conservation is known as the gift that keeps on giving.
Something that you can insulate for next to no cost is your hot water pipes. Anything goes, i have used packaging foam sheets, old towels cut into strips. WIth a few layers of towel wrapping the hot water pipes over a 10 meter distance i was still getting hot water in the kitchen after 3 or 4 hours in winter. and the pipes were run under the house, basically outside.
How did I forget that one? Perfect!
There are “blankets” that can be wrapped around a water heater tank (I did so in Texas – it was in the garage),
Way to go Cheap B.
These get better by the minute.
No argument upgrading or adding insulation is one of the best things you can do for your home, as well as the environment. It just may not be the first thing on the list, nor the wisest way to spend your money.
If you were walking around the house this winter, cold, and noticed the windows were wide open, would you throw on an extra sweater and turn up the heat to fix the problem? Well, you might throw on the sweater and turn up the heat, but you’d make sure to shut all the windows while you were at it. Fact is, the envelope of most homes leaks like a sieve, as do the heating and AC ducts. First thing a homeowner needs to do is think of the house as a system, and tighten the envelope to insure no air or moisture penetration, while providing adequate, controlled, ventilation. Insulation could be part of that process, or subsequent to it.
I highly recommend getting a home energy audit, as suggested above, to determine the proper steps to take. Done properly, you’ll have a prioritized scope of work, as opposed to the shotgun approach you might put together on your own. It’ll run a couple of hundred dollars, but should give a lot of bang for the buck. As a greenie, and a builder, I think it’ll show a good return on investment.
Great post. We can talk all we want about solutions, but offering real-world suggestions like this really get right to the heart of the matter. The best line in this is “conservation is the best energy production”. Thanks for this.
http://ecotalityblog.com
I have heard of a couple who insulated their house using yarn, of all things. I am not sure if what they used was a specific type of yarn. Unfortunately, the “artistic” couple did not properly insulate the ceilings and so their house is extremely cold. I heard that they are living in an apartment for the winter.
saF
Yikes yarn! I would guess that you would need A LOT of yarn to insulate a home. One thing you can do if you are starting from scratch (aka: building a home not retro’ing) is build a double wall construction with an air space in the middle. Then you make sure as little material as possible touches both walls, this air space combined with two walls worth of insulation makes your house mega insulated.
Check out this page from the Hyattsville Wiki (http://www.hyattsvillewiki.com/page/Insulation+Options)
– All different kinds of alternative (non-pink) insulation is broken down with links and video (for some).