Who do I call about my cold house?

[MrsAxilla]

This is our first winter in this house. We already know we need more insulation in the attic. The HVAC is new and so are all the windows. It doesn't feel like cold air is pouring in through the windows or from under the doors. When it was below freezing earlier this week, the heater could barely keep the temp at 68. Is it maybe not powerful enough? The front two bedrooms are way colder than the rest of the house for no apparent reason. Can I get like an energy efficient inspection or something? Does the power company do that? Any other ideas?

Also, we actually have two attic spaces and the previous owner put siding over the access to one of them (DUH!) Who do we call to have an access put in?

[wawa]

My power company does do an energy efficiency audit, so that's worth looking into.

Otherwise I'd start with getting an HVAC company out to make sure everything is working properly. All your ducts are open and sufficiently sized, big enough return, blah blah. Fox can give you all the right questions to ask.

And then insulate. Do you know if you have any insulation in the walls? Attic will be the biggest impact, but for rooms that are colder than others the walls would probably help. Is that side of the house more exposed to the wind maybe? Gets less sun?

Attic hatch - I'm confused. Was your old hatch outside?? Putting in a new one inside is a general handyman type thing. MH has done two at our house. They aren't terribly complicated.

[MrsAxilla]

Yes, apparently the second hatch was outside. The only reason we even know about it is because we had to have the electrician who rewired the great room back out and he said he warned them to leave the access when they resided the house. The only place to put it in inside is in the ceiling of the main great room, which would look terrible!!

[MrsAxilla]

Also, no wall insulation. We're kind of screwed there, I'd guess.

[wawa]

Re: attic hatch - yeah, we had to put one of ours in the kitchen and the other one in the guest room. Neither are ideal obviously, but our options were limited. The old hatches were both where our hall bathroom vanity is currently located. You gotta do what you gotta do. I wouldn't be comfortable with an outside attic hatch personally unless you could lock it and a padlock hanging on the side of your house just looks bizarre.

Re: wall insulation. you're not totally screwed if the rooms are cold enough to be worth a giant mess. You can do blown in insulation. It's what we did everywhere that we hadn't demo'd the exterior walls. And it made a HUGE difference. (combined with attic insulation) They'll drill ~4 inch holes in every stud bay of your exterior walls and pump in fluffy insulation (or you could get the more expensive, but more effective foam too). Then you'll have to have all the holes patched and mudded and repaint those rooms. Messy. But it works. I don't remember what we paid, but I could try and dig up a quote if you'd like.

If you went with foam they can do it from the outside and it's much easier (no mess inside!) but it's a lot more expensive.

[MrsAxilla]

Does the access panel have to go in the ceiling? My stairwell seperates the house (the stairs have high ceilings with skylights) but it looks like we can go in sideways from the hall at the top of the stairs. I'm not sure if you can visualize that.

[wawa]

Jan 16, 2013 10:55:58 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

Does the access panel have to go in the ceiling? My stairwell seperates the house (the stairs have high ceilings with skylights) but it looks like we can go in sideways from the hall at the top of the stairs. I'm not sure if you can visualize that.

No, it should be able to go in the wall.  It's unlikely the stud bays are wide enough for a comfortably wide access, so however does the install will have to frame it out like a door/window, but that's not a big deal.  

We have a split level and the attic hatch for the lower attic was in the wall.  

[cosmowife]

Do you have electric heat? If so, do you have a heat pump? I have heard that heat pumps just don't work that well in really cold weather. Oil or has puts out much hotter heat.

[FoxInFiji]

Yes everything Wawa said.

Can I ask where you are that you have no insulation in the walls?! I'm such an energy freak I don't think I could handle that. How big is your house?

Pep talk: Get your butt into gear and go get some unfaced batt insulation from a hardware/big box store right now! It's so easy and cheap you have no excuse. We have a big house footprint and therefore roof and attic. Adding two more layers of batt insulation over the 6" of existing blown in was the very first thing we did to the house. It only cost $1000 (for 2 layers of R-19) but paid for itself in 2-3 months.

Add another access door for the areas you can't reach. It's not hard to DIY you need only the most basic carpentry skills. Like wawa said reframe the studs like a door or window opening if you're going in a wall. If you're going in the ceiling it should fit between trusses since they are spaced farther apart. We just moved our access from a spare bedroom closet to our master walk-in closet so we put a permanent closet system in the small spare bedroom closet someday. We didn't do anything fancy for a door. Just bought a piece of paint grade plywood and used screws to hold it in place. We did glue 3 sheets of rigid foam insulation and add a strip of weather sealing on the back of the plywood to help conserve energy. We're going to paint and texture it like the rest of the drywall to help it blend in.

Yes you can add insulation to the walls but beware you need to first ensure you don't have any knob and tube wiring in the walls first. How old is your house? It's not just the heat loss from your walls. One of the biggest culprits in residential building is infiltration. If your walls aren't insulated then I'm sure they aren't sealed either. You won't be feeling cold air coming in from the doors and windows because the air has found a shorter path into your house...every wall! If you were able to somehow add one layer of plastic sheeting (ie. visqueen) behind your drywall (or plaster) you would instantly feel a difference. Unfortunately that isn't possible without a lot of demo.

Whatever you do upgrading to a bigger furnace probably isn't the answer. It won't give you any return on investment and only increase your monthly energy bill. Home improvement options don't always have a clear right and wrong answer but preventing the problem by improving your wall and attic construction as much as possible is clearly the right thing to do in this situation.

[FoxInFiji]

Jan 16, 2013 12:33:50 GMT -5 cosmowife said:

Do you have electric heat? If so, do you have a heat pump? I have heard that heat pumps just don't work that well in really cold weather. Oil or has puts out much hotter heat.

Heap pumps don't work well at or below 0 degrees F.  If she doesn't have insulation in her wall I hope for her sake she doesn't live in a location that gets to 0 degrees!

[cosmowife]

Also, we realized that our house had absolutely no insulation after we purchased it (it was built in 1958). We had insulation blown into the walls and ceilings. This is only really an option if you are willing to patch/repaint all of your walls, otherwise they will be covered in little holes! The insulation company did a "rough patch" and our painters/drywallers cleaned everything up. We did this in the middle of a renovation so it was easier.

They can also blow in insulation from the outside, but this is difficult if you have a surface that can't be patched easily (like cedar plank siding, which is what we have in parts).

We have heat pumps. Our house actually stays much warmer now than our previous house which was built in 1990.

[wawa]

check out mrs. A's avatar. It's a pretty good representation of where she lives.

[MrsAxilla]

My house was built in 1972. I guess I don't know about wall insulation for sure. Is there any way to tell without cutting a hole? We're going to have to redo some of the plumbing and so we'll tear up the walls then.

We have a gas furnace. We only have a handful of sub-zero temps each year (at least lately. global warming and all that). We have the opposite problem in the summer. I'm assuming proper insulation and such will help with that, too.

[pitterwoo]

Just wanted to give you a pep talk that adding insulation won't be that bad and you will feel so much more comfortable! Been there, our house didn't have any wall insulation and minimal in the attic. Our heating bills have gone down by at least half.

[mrs.jacinthe]

As regards checking for insulation in the walls, I would drill a small hole (or find a hole that's already drilled - say for a nail) around head level. Bend a coat hanger or other sturdy wire, stick it through the hole, fish it around. Pull it back out. If there's any insulation at all stuck on the hook, there's probably insulation in there, although it may not be sufficient. If you don't get anything on the end of the wire, the insulation has probably settled or is nonexistent.

The more expensive way to check for air leakage ... call a certified energy consultant and have them trot out with a thermal camera. Your house will light up in the spots where cold is getting in. It'll run you about $400+, but some insulation companies will do it for free with an estimate. Check around.