Top Tip for Choosing a Home Insulation Installer

If you’re seriously interested in “Going Green” you have undoubtedly looked into the possibility of insulating your home.  For older homes, it is the single biggest thing you can do to save on your own energy costs, while contributing to the environment.  Older homes were built in the days of cheap energy and insulating and air sealing a house was not a significant issue.  Today that has all changed and more and more homeowners are attempting to tighten up their homes.

Insulating an entire home can be an extremely time consuming task for many homeowners to undertake on their own so finding the best possible home insulation contractor available is their first option.  While you might think the process of evaluating insulation contractors is the same as it is for evaluating any other home improvement contractor, there is one major difference.

Check the Internet for “tips on choosing contractors” and you’ll get a lot of advice; some of it general and some specific.  One thing you will always find is the admonition to check references and visit homes where they have worked.  This works fine for a general contractor who has installed an outdoor deck, or a painter, or a kitchen remodeler.  Why?  You can see direct evidence of the work.  You can see the quality of the paint job.  But how can you tell a good home insulation job from a bad one?

Certainly a reference can tell you whether the contractor completed the job in a timely manner without leaving a big mess behind.   But you have no way of knowing whether the insulation contractor chose the best insulation materials and installation methods for your home or not.  So follow all those selection tips you’ve found and add this tip to your list.  It may be the best tip you’ll get.

When all is said and done, you want to hire a contractor for any renovation project who knows what he or she is doing.  You want a contractor who is aware of the latest materials and construction methods and the advantages and disadvantages of each.  In interviewing a contractor, how do you know they know what they’re talking about if you know absolutely nothing about the topic?

That’s the tip, in all its simplicity:  educate yourself.  In about an hour you can search the Internet and learn enough about home insulation to be able to evaluate a potential home insulation installer.  Focus your search on advantages and disadvantages and you’ll uncover enough potential questions to ask to be able to tell whether the person you’re interviewing knows what they’re talking about.

As an example, one thing you’ll learn is the importance of the System R Value.  R-values measure the efficiency of insulating materials.  Blowing insulating material with a high R-Value into your walls won’t help stop air penetration from sources like windows and doors.  The System R-Value is the efficiency of the whole room, or the whole house.  Ask the installer what goes into improving the System R-Value of your home.  If he or she responds with a discussion or air penetration, conduction, radiation, and convection – all readily understandable issues you’ll learn from your Internet search – you may have found the right person.  On the other hand, if he or she responds with an explanation of the R-value of just the insulating material, without any discussion of other issues of air penetration and energy transfer, look for another contractor.