Insulation
Congratulations you have past your cover inspection and its time to insulate your house. Many people over look this step and think insulation is insulation. Well you can think that way, but when it comes time to heat your house you will be glad you took my advice. I insulated every wall in the house for noise. I also fully insulated my garage. Now I hired this project out because I hate working with insulation. Also the cost difference to have a contractor do it is not that much more. Now I ended up firing my first insulation company because they were incompetent. They had no idea how to tent my sprinkler heads and asked if they could cut a hole in my floor. Yes they called me at work and asked if they could cut a hole in my floor because there insulation bags were to big to fit through my crawl space. I told them they were crazy and to open the bags before they went under crawl space. Eventually I ended up hiring a different company to finish the job because they could not even do the basics. Now in my attic I had insulation blown in over rafters.
R Value
The higher the r value the better the insulation. Make sure the company that you chose uses the r value required in plans or better. It is the insulation contractors job to lay down your plastic on ground under crawl space. It is also there job to wrap your water lines with insulation. Make sure they fire foam all big gaps and electrical outlet holes that will leak cold air into house. The idea is to make an air tight seal for the house. Chose your contractor wisely. I thought I had because the company was well known but sometimes you will not know until the job has started. The best thing I did was called it quits when I realized they couldn't even do the simplest tasks. I only paid the company for what was done and moved on to hiring a better contractor. Another problem was they did not know how to tent my fire sprinklers. The idea is to put insulation over the fire heads but leave a gap so heat from the house can be trapped for the sprinkler heads and pipes. So if you have fire sprinklers make sure to ask your contractor about sprinkler tenting and if they have no idea what your talking about move on to the next contractor. Once all insulation is installed and air seal is complete you can test you energy efficiency with a blow test. I did not do this because I was sure my insulation was installed at every point of my house. If you want you can ask your insulation company if they will perform a blow test after installation. They basically put a large blower fan in a door way and seal it shut. They then blow air out of the house and suck air in from any outside leaks. Smoke can help with pinpointing where your major leak concerns are coming from. If your house is heated with solar power then you may want to have this test done.
