Installed to R-38, full depth right out to the eaves, with baffles keeping your soffit vents clear. Usually finished in a single visit.
R-value is a function of depth, and depth is the thing that gets quietly shortchanged. It is easy to blow a thick layer near the hatch where it is comfortable to work and thin it out toward the eaves where it is 140 degrees and you are lying on your side. That is also exactly where heat gets in.
We leave a depth ruler standing in the attic so the finished level is verifiable, and we photograph it. You should not have to take anyone's word for how much material went in.
Depth readings in several locations, not just by the hatch, plus a check for moisture, staining and pest activity.
Air sealing goes in before any new material. Blowing insulation over unsealed penetrations buries the problem instead of fixing it.
Installed before insulating, to keep soffit intake vents open and preserve attic airflow.
Consistent coverage across the whole floor, out to the perimeter, worked back toward the access rather than away from it.
Depth ruler in frame, corners and eaves included. You see the finished attic without having to climb into it.
The EPA estimates homeowners save an average of about 15% on heating and cooling costs by air sealing and adding attic insulation. Anyone promising 40% is guessing. Your real number depends on your home size, current R-value, how leaky the attic is, and how you run your system.
Blown-in insulation has no expiry date. Fiberglass is spun glass and cellulose is treated paper, and neither decays sitting on an attic floor. What ends its working life is settling, moisture from a roof leak or a sweating duct, foot traffic from every trade that goes up there, and pests. In practice most Houston attics are worth reassessing somewhere in the fifteen to twenty year range, sooner if there has been a leak or animal activity.
The Department of Energy puts Houston in Climate Zone 2, where the recommended attic level is R-30 to R-60. We target R-38, which is roughly 14 inches of blown-in material. Many Houston attics measure R-13 to R-19 because they were built to an older code and have settled since.
For an existing attic floor, blown-in wins clearly. Your attic floor is not a clean rectangle, it is full of joists, wiring, ductwork and awkward corners. Batts have to be cut and fitted by hand around all of it, and in practice they get compressed and gaps get skipped. Blown-in material flows into everything and settles at a consistent depth.
Both perform well installed to the right depth. Fiberglass does not absorb water readily and settles less. Cellulose has slightly better R-value per inch and packs into awkward cavities well, but settles somewhat, so a good installer blows to a greater initial depth to account for it. The installer matters more than the material.
Most homes are a single visit. A straightforward top-up can be two to three hours. A full removal, air seal and reinstall on a larger home can run most of a day.
No. Insulation pushed into the soffits blocks attic intake ventilation, which in Houston humidity is how you create a moisture problem later. We install baffles at the eaves to hold the material back and keep the airflow path open.
We measure your current depth and tell you what you actually need.