How To Fix An Old Attic

hey guys welcome back today i'm going to be going up in my attic and fixing some issues that i've got now the attic is in pretty rough shape right now everything's been cobbled together people have done electrical work up there and the wires are just going everywhere insulation is exposed in some places where you can just see the sheetrock below it so i need to go up there and fix all of this now i'll show you a couple things i'm going to take up with me i have a couple led lamps that i'm going to take up one corded one battery and a headlamp that will help out because there are no lights up there right now i also have some wire i'm going to be doing a fair amount of electrical work up there i've got a couple boxes i'm gonna take up and actually install permanent lighting up there so that if i do any work in the future i can easily work up there without having to bring all these lights up with me i have also have all my electrical tools so i don't have to come out of the attic i have all my wire nuts and different wire connections that i need and then i also have some spider killer and some b spray as well i hate bees don't want to get stung so i'm going to take that up just in case now it is pretty cold out right now we're in january so i shouldn't be an issue for the spiders and bees now i also have a lot of these cans of spray insulation that i'm going to be using to seal cracks and gaps from the house up into the attic to seal that off so that there isn't air leaking from the downstairs up into the attic and from the attic down into the house that's going to save a ton of energy and i know already that we have at least 20 cam lights in our house and those are notorious for leaking air from the downstairs up into the attic so i'm going to be sealing those up as well now another must-have is a good mask now you can easily get the paper mask they don't really do that much they'll filter out some of it but i really like these respirators they have a rubber mouthpiece on it that seals up against your face really well it's comfortable it also has two filters on either side a thin filter on the outside to grab all the big debris and then on the inside there is a really fine filter that filters out all the fine dust that could be getting in your lungs now if you have asthma or other respiratory issues having a nice filter is really going to help and just to show you how much this filtered out just the time that i spent up in the attic this is i switched the filters out twice but this is when it got a little dirty had to change it out you can just see the layer of insulation that this filtered out and kept this from getting in my lungs i'm going to start carrying all the tools up into the attic and getting ready to start i need to just start digging in checking everything making sure everything's good and figuring out what needs to be fixed [Music] now the first section i'm starting and you can already see the wiring is a mess most of the wiring up here has been redone but all the wires have about two to three feet of slack and that isn't necessary it looks messy it's hard to get around in the attic without tripping over these wires so i'm gonna fix that by folding it in six inch sections and taping it by the box or by the light fixture that it's running to if you ever need more slack you can cut that tape and use the wire there but it will straighten everything up and keep it organized also there's a ton of clippings and wire strippings all over this this attic if you're doing electrical work up in the attic don't do this just put it in a bucket throw it away once you're done it really makes it look like a very sloppy job has been done and you haven't done it right also all the boxes up here aren't fastened down to anything you can easily trip over them and cause some shorts or cut into the wires so i'm gonna fasten them to the rafters but before i jump into all of the insulation and fixing everything else i'm gonna run some permanent lights through the peak of this attic i'll put three lights one in the center and one on either end and that will really help brighten this up so that i can work a lot easier i'm installing a switch box right above the ladder so as you climb up into the attic you can turn on all three lights with one switch [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] to get power to those three lights that i just ran across the attic i'm going to be using the electrical box i first started talking about that wasn't mounted down to anything this i know is only supplying the master bedroom lights nothing else so it definitely has enough capacity to run three more lights through the attic and that should be no problem at all so i'm gonna hook that up make sure the power is off before you start working on anything like this and that's when having these battery powered lights is really helpful because i had to shut off the power to the attic and keep that off while i was working so these battery powered likes worked really well [Music] now it may seem like a lot of extra work and not worth it but really it was only about 15 to 20 to install these lights only took me about an hour and a half to do them and now that they're done i have lots of light in the attic it will save me a ton of time i don't have to carry it around a light and make sure the light shining right where i'm working all the time i can easily see up here now also the lights that i installed have outlets on them so i can easily take a tool up there plug it in and run it off of the power on the light as well it just really is a lot easier and in my opinion definitely worth it if you know how to run wire and it can install your own boxes and lights you really need to have lights in your attic if you're going to be spending any time up there at all [Music] so [Music] do [Music] now the lighting is just about finished i need to start working now on fixing up and cleaning up the attic the first thing i wanted to check make sure that the insulation was in good shape and it thankfully it does look like it's in pretty good shape there's no animal damage or water damage or mold going on up here it seems like it's in pretty good shape there's a lot of older gray insulation with some newer stuff white stuff on top and it all seems like it's working pretty good so i'm going to leave that in there now next on the list is to seal up around all of the electrical boxes can lights all the tops of the walls any holes that are going down through the walls where the wires are going i need to seal all of that so that there is no air leaking from the downstairs up into the attic so first i'm going to expose all of the can lights these actually have really big gaps around them and i'm going to make sure that i seal those up really well because those are probably the majority of the air leaking up through the attic is going through those can lights next i'm going to be also exposing all the tops of the walls and sealing up the gaps along that this will help increase efficiency as well and help insulate the walls now you don't have to expose everything this much and clean it up like this i wanted to show you guys what it looked like how i was filling this up with spray foam i filled up 55-gallon bags full of insulation to clear out this section but compared to the other side of the attic this has way more insulation so i'll level out what's left here and use those three bags to fill in the other side and make sure everything's even now you can see here i'm just exposing about two to three inches on either side of the walls and around the cam lights and this gives me plenty of room to spray foam and seal those up and not have to expose the whole ceiling and empty out all the insulation while i'm here [Music] once i'm done sealing everything up with spray foam i can start leveling out the insulation again i'll fill this all back in make sure everything's level with the rafters now i'm also making sure that the insulation isn't filling up where the rafters and the trusses are meeting at the lowest point of the roof you don't want that to be full of insulation or else it's going to be causing a lot of ventilation issues so i've got this whole section leveled out this is the master bedroom i have everything sealed up and i can now fill this in with insulation i'm also going to be going through the rest of the attic doing the same thing i have right here a piece of paper i went downstairs and sketched out where all the lights are in the house where those cam lights are that i need to seal all the electrical boxes and where the walls will be going as well this isn't to scale it will just give me sort of a checklist that i can make sure that i'm getting everything that i can see downstairs now there are already strips of plywood and chipboard up here that i can use for platforms to work on this helps a lot so you don't have to worry about stepping on the rafters and not falling through the ceiling so in the main travel areas i'm going to be screwing these down to the rafters so that they aren't going to be moving around then i'll have a couple that i'll be moving around with me wherever i'm working i'll set those up and it'll make it a lot easier to work and more comfortable [Music] the next place i'm going to be sealing up is around the access door to the attic and i know this spot is not going to be able to seal up that well it's going to be probably the biggest point of leak efficiency in the attic but i want to make it as efficient as possible so whoever installed this didn't do a good job they left a lot of gaps around the outsides in between the boards fastening it to the rafters so i'm just going to fill this up with spray foam and try to seal it as good as i can then i'll spread out the insulation again level out everything with the rafters and it should be good to go [Music] another section that was losing a lot of energy was this i believe it was a skylight and you can see in the top that chipboard right there is not the original plywood it's been replaced so i'm just gonna tear out all the sheetrock clean this out i'm gonna leave the framing in case this is holding anything up on the roof it's old house so i'm not gonna tear out the framing if i don't have to also this section in here wasn't insulated so i'm going to cover that up make sure that it's not just exposed sheetrock losing a lot of energy from the house [Music] you can see with this loose insulation it's very uneven so i'm pulling it from the high spots and leveling it out in the low areas making sure that i have a good six inches across the whole attic now for the climate that i live in it's recommended to have a r value insulation of 30 to 60 and to have this loose insulation only filling up the rafters it's not nearly what it should be so this is only about probably 20 to 25 r value now to fix this i'm actually gonna get rolled out insulation it won't be in this video maybe a future video i'll do of insulating this attic i'll roll out the insulation the opposite direction of the rafters so that it supports the weight of the insulation and doesn't just crush the loose insulation on top and that will bump it up to probably r40 or r50 which is perfectly fine for where i'm at [Music] now as i was working i noticed a large section of the sheetrock was exposed so i went closer to check it out and found something really exciting [Music] nice i was shocked to find it and was even more shocked that it still worked now all my battery tools are milwaukee so i don't have a charger for ridgid so i'll probably have to get a charger for it because it's still a really nice drill i don't know how long it's been up here at least three or four years because that's how long we've owned the house [Music] now in this next section i'm finding layer after layer of four inch insulation with the moisture barrier on the back and this is really bad you don't want to have moisture barriers on the attic in different layers because it's going to trap in moisture it's going to cause mold and it's going to cause rot so i'm going to pull all of that for inch insulation that has the moisture barrier out i'll put it in a bag i'll probably end up using it somewhere else in the attic but you can easily just rip the paper off the back and still use the insulation so i'm gonna fold it all up and put in a couple bags and i'll probably end up using it before i'm finished with this project so i don't know what it is about addicts and crawl spaces maybe it's just miserable to work in them i i get that but people feel like they need to cut corners they don't do a complete job they make a mess and just leave it up here because nobody sees it but when you do come up here it looks like a mess if you had a house inspector come up here with what the attic looked like before they would have a lot of things that you need to get fixed before you sell the house and all sorts of problems so another thing that i ran into up here was this box right here so this was installed when they installed new cam lights in the dining room and all of these are new wires going into it the problem is this box is way too small you can see the lid here is being pushed up and won't seal so either he didn't put the wires in right or the box is way too small for the amount of stuff he's got in there now another thing is this isn't really tied to anything i'd like to have it probably nailed to this two by four right here just so it's stable staying in one place not getting tripped on and pulling the wires out and all sorts of stuff also there's this loose wire and it's about where this junction box should be too so it has about amount the same amount of slack as all the other wires i'm guessing it was supposed to be in this one he took it out when he put in the new junction box and there was enough room so he actually put two three wire nuts on here and it's the same style of wire nuts just the clip-ons that are in all of the other work he's done so i know he did this it's not up to code it's not safe so i'm gonna install a bigger junction box it's only like 60 more cents at a hardware store i don't know why you didn't do that first i'll install a bigger junction box here and put all of those wires into that junction box make sure the lid goes down completely and it doesn't get stuck open like this again each of these wires had about two to three feet of slack so i'm going to fold those up in six inch sections and put a wire tie or electrical tape around it to hold it in place right beside the box [Music] do now again be really careful about this make sure the power is off if you don't know how to do electrical don't jump into a project like this i have a couple videos if you're interested in learning a little bit more on how to do a wiring and hook everything up go check out those videos i'll leave the link at the end of this one [Music] now in this section of the attic you can see outside that the trusses were starting to sag and that's because they messed up the supports up here they took out a supporting wall and had to put in this new beam and didn't put in supports for the trusses anymore so we had to come in and build two knee walls on either side of the attic to support those trusses individually and try to lift them back up into place if you're interested in seeing how to build a knee wall like this and how to lift up a sagging roof check out my video next week where i'll be showing you just how to do this [Music] now all that foreign insulation i took out of this section of the attic because it had the moisture barrier on it i'm going to take that out now and this is a perfect place to fill it up in between these two beams so i'll take off that paper moisture barrier on the back and then i can layer as much as this insulation as i want in this gap and fill it up and not have to worry about that moisture causing damage in [Music] here [Music] do [Music] now another thing that i ran into that i feel is very common for addicts is to have the exhaust fans from the house go straight up into the attic and not actually outside so this could be exhaust fans for bathrooms and showers as well as kitchens in this case i had a bathroom vent that went straight up into the attic i actually fixed that pretty quickly after buying the house i didn't want that to rot out the sheeting up on top and cause some mold so i fixed that and i also ran into now the hood vent over top of our stove goes straight up into the attic and not actually outside so i need to fix that as well now you can see right over there i believe that's the box for the fan and for the hood vent on the stove but right behind it is an exhaust fan and or exhaust pipe and that's just going straight up into the attic and not going anywhere and i believe that's a flex pipe too it looks like it's ribbed a little bit so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna try to bend that pipe up and over here as far as it'll go and my plan is to go outside this wall right here with the vent so that no animals can get into it but i'll have to get probably extension pipe and run that over here and out that wall that's the outside wall right there leading to the outdoors so if any steam or grease blows out there perfectly fine up here it's going to cause a lot of issues now there's three bags of loose insulation i bagged up at the very beginning of this video i'm going to be using right here at the lowest point of the attic where there's the least amount of insulation i'll be able to fill this in and use up all the leftover insulation that i have now something that i found helps a lot is to have some sort of a insulation rake to pull and push the insulation around and i just used two pieces of scrap wood and screwed those together creating a rake it's light and easy to move around in here and it works really really well so you can see here all the insulation and the sections leveled out just about finished with all this i gotta move all the tools and leftover wood out of the attic and clean this all up hey guys so i just finished up the attic finally it's been a couple weekends that i've been up here working on this took a lot of time but now i know all the wiring is sorted out all the loose wires that were around here are now in junction boxes everything's done right i've installed lights up here so if i need to i can flip a switch turn on the lights in the attic i don't think i'll use it for storage but if i ever have to go up here again and work up here these lights are amazing to work with so i've also sealed up all of the walls electrical boxes and all of these cam lights there's probably 20 some lights a cam lights in the ceiling and they have big gaps around those that all the air from the in in the winter all the hot air from the house is rising right up through those cam lights wasting all that heat and then in the summer super hot heat up here is going down into the house through those cam lights we're losing a lot of efficiency so i've sealed up all of that we shouldn't have hardly any air leakage now and i've already noticed with the heating is it's much more manageable now it's doing a lot better and i'm sure this summer our uh ac bill is gonna drop a lot so i'm really excited about that so also i leveled out all of the loose insulation in here that you guys saw there were spots where the previous owner did work up here and never covered it back up it was just exposed sheetrock and that is really bad you're going to lose a lot of heat and a lot of ac in the summer in next week's video i'll show you guys we installed two knee walls to support the trusses at the other end of the house because the previous owner took out a supporting wall in the kitchen and in between the kitchen and living room opened it up looks really nice downstairs but it messed everything up up here so the trusses did not have these supports any anymore and they were starting to sag and we actually were able to pry up on those trusses individually and take that sag out and install a knee wall to support those and we shouldn't have any trouble now with those sagging anymore i'll show you a couple quick before and after clips of what this looks like now something i found that was really interesting about this is when i sealed up all those cam lights and electrical boxes at the top of the walls it increased the efficiency of the heat but it also helped out with the quality of air and something that i used to notice was every time i woke up i had a little bit of congestion between allergies and asthma that bothered me a little bit but since i've sealed up the attic i no longer wake up with congestion or stuffy nose or any allergies so i think that is because i sealed up around those can lights and we have four cam lights in our master bedroom so that would make a big difference and i think it's helped out a lot so hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did hit that like button down below if you have not subscribed to the channel yet hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions let me know in the comment section below and i'll try to get back to you thanks guys i'll see you in the next one

Channel: SimonSaysDIY

Views: 233,107

Keywords: How to fix an attic, How to seal an attic, how to air seal your attic, how to insolate an attic, insolating attic, how to seal an attic with spray foam, how to clean an attic, how to fix an attic, old house attic, how to fix up old attic, how to remodel attic, how to fix a rough attic, should you seal your attic, how to improve home energy bills, how to save energy in your attic, Attic insolation, Fixing attic mistakes, DIY attic insolation, DIY attic Update, improving attic

Id: PMIaIUw7nVA

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021