Retrofit insulation in Mandan ND - warmer rooms in the house you already have

Most people who call me have one cold bedroom, a drafty upstairs or a power bill that jumps every January, in a house built before anyone worried much about insulation. The price turns on how many inches are already up there, which parts of the house you want done, how many gaps need sealing and whether old insulation has to come out first. The schedule turns on the same things, plus anything we find that has to be fixed before new material goes in. I come out to look at every house and write the estimate myself, so you get a number for your house and not a guess over the phone.

This work happens in a house people are living in, so we start by covering the floors and closing off the work area to keep dust out of the rest of your rooms. In the attic we check what's already there first, because new insulation over old material that got soaked or filled with mouse droppings just buries the problem, and if I find something that needs fixing, I'll stop and tell you. Then comes air sealing, closing the gaps around can lights, pipes and the attic hatch, so the new insulation isn't fighting a draft. We keep the eave vents clear so the attic can still breathe, then blow in loose fill through a hose, keeping it full depth out to the edges, where thin coverage usually shows up. In the walls we drill access holes and fill the cavities, and you choose whether the holes get patched or covered with trim, and we clean up before we leave.

Most retrofit jobs start overhead, and if the attic is your only trouble spot, our attic insulation page covers that work on its own. Where ductwork runs through the attic, we may suggest spray foam insulation, which seals air while it insulates but costs more, so for most other attics I'd seal the gaps and top up the loose fill instead.

In Mandan, building permits come from the city's Building Inspection Department, and the city requires one to build, add on to, alter, repair, move or tear down a building. The city's permit list doesn't settle on its own whether your insulation job needs one, but its permits page has an insulation form right next to the residential permit application, so I don't assume we can skip it. When a job needs a permit, we pull it and set up the inspections, where the department checks the work against the building code, and if you're not sure about yours, ask and I'll find out.

A lot of the houses we work in here are older, with walls that never got insulated and an attic holding several owners' worth of good intentions, some of it soaked or chewed up. We see the same thing on jobs across Mandan and over in Bismarck, so we look before we add anything.