How to Insulate and Air Seal an Attic Access Opening to Save Energy

[Music] [Music] [Music] they're free cheap handle I love it okay so here's the end result I've been using this for about three months now and it's worked great so what I did was I measured the attic access opening and I cut a piece of foam that was bigger than the attic access opening so that it would sit on top of the framing then I cut another piece of foam and I traced an outline of the inside of the attic access opening onto the foam and then I cut that out what that gave me was a piece is gonna fit nice and tight inside the opening and a piece is gonna sit on top of the opening and then I glued those together so because this lid fits very tight in the opening I needed something to grab on to to be able to pull it down that's where I came up with these two dowel rods that go through the phone and then they anchor into this two by eight on the backside and to anchor the dowel rods into this two way I just drove a screw right beside each one and that did the trick so let's put it in so if you have an attic access hole in the interior living space of your house this is probably something you're gonna want to do because this is potentially one of the weakest spots in a buildings envelope and this is especially true in winter because heat rises and all of that air that you paid to heat is gonna go right out your attic access hole and it's kind of like a chimney it's gonna continue to draw that air up constantly it's probably equivalent to having a couple small windows open in your house all the time if you don't have anything blocking the air flow so that's why you want to build an attic access lid that's made out of something that's non permeable to air like foam if you just have a fiberglass bat in there that's not enough because fiberglass is not airtight it acts like an air filter and the air can't move through it as quickly but air will definitely be moving through it now foam is not air permeable so this is acting like a block and it's not gonna let air get through there may be a little bit of air get through around the edge but that's why you want to get the foam cut to an exact size and you want it to fit tight and then also this foam every two inches is in our 10 so I got four inches there so that's going to be an AR 20 of insulation value and that's about all there is to it if you found this video helpful please hit the like button and subscribe thanks

Channel: How to Hacks

Views: 20,660

Rating: 4.8869257 out of 5

Keywords: attic access, air seal, attic, energy savings, diy, how to, attic access lid, insulation, attic insulation, energy audit, air seal an attic, home improvement, do it yourself, cellulose insulation, fiberglass insulation, Air seal attic access door

Id: Az-Zk_1IJqs

Length: 3min 18sec (198 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020