We Can Help with New Home Construction Comfort and Energy Efficiency

Wednesday, January 24th, 2018 by Joy Padgett

Congratulations! You’re building a new home! This is an exciting time for you, but it can also be a stressful time. You’re overseeing the project rather than using a builder, so you’ve got to find the contractors and set the budget and monitor everything. It seems like a daunting task….but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Weatherization Plus can give you an estimate for insulation, air sealing, duct sealing, crawl space encapsulation, and more! If you haven’t even broken ground yet, but are wanting to work on a budget for your project, we can look at your blueprints and give you a pretty good idea of what these services will cost you. We can also speak with you about options you might not have thought about, and what the impacts will be on your completed house. For example, if you don’t air seal your attic before you insulate it, your house will not be as comfortable as it could be AND you could be encouraging draftiness and higher utility bills.

If you want your house built with both comfort and energy efficiency in mind, we can help with that! We can provide you with information about insulation, and the importance of duct sealing, air sealing, and crawl space encapsulation (and more) before mistakes are made and you’ve compromised the comfort and energy efficiency of your home before you even spend the first night in it. Explaining building science is our specialty!

Although homes today are built much differently than say 50 years ago, most contractors and builders still take short cuts….and sometimes you won’t realize it even if you are overseeing the project yourself. In meeting with Weatherization Plus up front, we can help you better understand measures that should be taken prior to certain other measures being taken. After all, you don’t want to move in and find out that your brand new house is drafty and then be told all of that new, fluffy insulation has to be removed in order to fix the problem, right?

Because we understand how a house operates as a whole, we conduct our assessment with that in mind. We don’t simply specialize in blowing in insulation, for example. We understand how insulation is supposed to work and how the environment needs to be prepared to allow the insulation to do its job. Insulation cannot work properly if certain conditions are present. We can greatly reduce those conditions prior to putting the insulation into an attic or crawl space….or walls, or floors…..

Since we offer several different types of insulation, including closed-cell spray foam, we can meet your insulation needs and advise you on products that may not perform up to your expectations if installed in certain areas of your home. You’re not going to find that if you call a company who only does spray foam. And spray foam does NOT work in every situation…as those companies would like you to believe. PLUS, there are certain health hazards associated with spray foam if you are exposed to the fumes within a certain amount of time after it has been installed….something else many spray foam companies won’t tell you. These companies see your safety as your problem. We look at your safety as our duty to protect as best we can.

We have an insulation product to meet just about any budget and, since we are building science professionals, we can help you determine what type of insulation to use in the many different areas of your under-construction home. We can help you build a more energy efficient home from the start!

We don’t just specialize in insulation, though. We can complete air sealing measures while your house is under construction which will be mush easier to do before drywall ad insulation are installed. Air sealing is an important factor in allowing the insulation to actually do its job….insulate. If air is allowed to pass through your insulation, it is acting merely as a giant filter. Reducing the air flow as much as possible greatly increases the effectiveness of the insulation. And air sealing must be done before the insulation goes in.

Duct systems should be properly sealed and insulated. Houses will settle over time, and if the duct system hasn’t been sealed and insulated, gaps and cracks will form where each segment of duct is joined together as the house settles. Once this separation happens, you’ll be heating and cooling your attic or crawl space (depending on where your duct system is located). Why not have your duct system encapsulated? We can do that!

If you’re building your house on a crawl space, it is important that the crawl space be air sealed and encapsulated. This helps keep the floors of your home at a reasonable temperature and helps keep your crawl space dry. However, if your crawl space is built in an area where dampness or moisture issues will be present, we can install a sump pump to keep the area drier. Our CleanSpace Crawl Space Encapsulation system creates a wonderful, clean and sealed crawl space that allows very little air to come from the crawl space up into your house. Plus, if your crawl space is of the taller variety, you may be able to use it for storage!

It’s easy to see who you should be talking to while you’re building your new home! Weatherization Plus!