Attic Insulation Options and Measuring

hi I'm Gail Tetons and I'm from Owens Corning I'm here today to talk about how to add insulation to your attic first let's look at some of the insulation product options that you have the first product we have is fiberglass loose fill insulation a loose fill insulation is blown in through a machine and through a hose up into the attic and it expands many times the volume of this package fiberglass insulation is naturally non combustible it doesn't support food it's not a food source form all it won't rot and it'll last the life of the home and perform for the life of the home now the second thing we have is a batt insulation and that's like a pillow of fiberglass insulation and it comes in a couple of forms one in a roll this is a one-piece role and also batts and bags which is pre-cut batts this one in particular has eight pieces and they're cut to 48 inch in length you notice also that they're faced and what that means is that on the back of the insulation is a paper vapor retarder now it's important to note that if you already have insulation in your attic you don't need it and you shouldn't use a vapor retarder because the vapor retarder would be between the layers and it might trap moisture there however if you have no insulation at all you need to check with your local building codes a vapor retarder might be required if it's required use this and if not you can use this or you can use the unfazed product so if you look at the rule here it's got a lot of information for your project this package is a roll bat it's one piece and it's 25 feet in length it's an AR 30 and made for attics and flat ceilings so you can look at the package to see what you need for your project so now that we know what options we have for insulation we can go ahead and measure to see what we need first of all measure the depth of insulation that you already have and calculate how much you need to get to the top of your floor joist and as well as to the total amount of insulation that you're going to use the do-e the Department of Energy recommends to have up to an r60 and this depends on what climate zone where you live in the country now an r60 is 19 inches of bad insulation and 22 inches of Louisville insulation so those are numbers that you need to have in mind the next thing is that you need to measure the square footage of your attic and you do that by measuring the length and the width and multiplying those two numbers together and finally you need to measure between the joists to know what that distance is if you're using that insulation typically homes are 16 to 24 inches on center so we've learned about the measurements and the selection of products that you have so now we're ready to start insulating to watch the other segments in this video series or for how-to videos on almost any other topic visit monkey-see dot-com

Channel: MonkeySee

Views: 156,576

Rating: 4.7150998 out of 5

Keywords: attic, insulate, batt, doe, department, energy, inches, 19, 22, insulation, loose, fill, measure, vent, lighting, tools, stairway, owens, corning, House, home, comfort, save

Id: xjgRCmQL03o

Length: 3min 5sec (185 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2009