Is it time to clean and insulate your attic? Are you in the middle of getting proposals from contractors to clean and insulate your attic? 

Today, we’re going to talk about three costly mistakes that homeowners do when choosing a contractor. Actually, the contractors are making the mistake but you will not. 

AusTex is a professional duct cleaning company that provides services of air duct cleaning, chimney sweeps, and attic insulation. For over 12 years, we are helping homeowners become more comfortable in their homes and making sure that their home is healthier and energy efficient. We truly believe you can learn a lot about the health of the home just by looking into the attic and process. 

Mistake # 1: Attic Cleaning

⇒ Keeping the old insulation beneath the new insulation:

So, let’s start with the one that we see almost in every home. There is a lot of blown insulation but underneath the blown, there is a different type of insulation that is all filled with either rodent feces or mold and mildew. A lot of homeowners are not aware that this is exactly like putting a band-aid on a wound from a gun. 

What happened is that when you put new insulation on top of all the insulation that is contaminated with rat feces, what you’re essentially creating is poor air quality plus sword ants getting attracted more and more to this area because they mark territory with fish and urine.  Good contractors like us remove all the old insulation, sanitize, and clean it the right way. 

Now, let’s talk about how much money you can save by doing that. If you put blown insulation on top, next time when you would have to do the service, it’s going to be way more costly because of the garbage fee and it would, certainly, take more time. Just think about removing all the fluffy stuff that is not going to take a day. It’s going to be expensive, besides that, the health benefit is enormous. 

Mistake # 2: Air Sealing

⇒ Missing the air sealing portion of the service:

The second mistake is that they miss the air sealing portion of the service which is essentially sealing air pockets or air gaps between your living space and the attic. Air sealing saves a lot of money when you do it correctly. If you don’t do it, it basically translates to, maybe, another $30 to $40 monthly. But sometimes, it’s $200 to $300 monthly on your energy bill. 

So, just by removing the old insulation, air sealing, and putting your insulation, you can save a lot of money. If you can imagine in the attic, you have electrical wires, air ducts, vents, and pipes, basically, a lot of energy is getting lost through this area. 

Mistake # 3: Rodent Proofing

⇒ Failing to rodent proof the entire attic:

The third thing is, that in order to make sure that your home is rodent proof, seal the areas with mesh and metal so rodents cannot get in. You can do this service only when all the insulation is removed completely. 

So, if you want to make sure that your home is energy efficient and the air quality of your home is better, you got to do things the right way. 

If you have questions, you want somebody from our company to come and evaluate your attic or crawl space, give us a call at (512) 522 0569. We do free estimation and we’re going to go all the way into the attic or cross space, we will dig inside and underneath the insulation. Make sure you don’t have any rodent feces and no mold and we will give you a quote to do things the right way, so you only need to do this service once.