Air sealing services in Alhambra CA - rooms that stop pulling in attic air

If the upstairs stays hot or the rooms under the attic feel drafty, adding more attic insulation on top usually won't fix it, because the air keeps moving through the gaps underneath. The price mostly turns on how many hidden leaks we find, how much old insulation has to be pulled back to reach them and how easy your attic is to get into. The schedule turns on access and on anything that should come first, such as a roof leak to repair or old fill that needs checking. I'll give you your own figure once I've looked at the attic.

I start by looking over the attic and the rooms below it, because the drafts you feel at the doors are usually the small part of the problem, and the bigger leaks sit buried under the insulation. Our crew pulls the insulation back around can lights, pipes, wire holes, the tops of walls and the hatch, seals those gaps with caulk and foam, and weatherstrips the hatch so it closes tight. If the old insulation is soaked or full of droppings, we take it out rather than seal over it, and we keep the eave vents clear so the attic can still breathe. Then the insulation goes back evenly, full depth at the edges as well as in the middle. If you have a gas furnace or water heater, we plan for it to be tested before and after the sealing, for the reason I give in the questions below.

Sealing often leads into other work. In a house with a basement, the gaps around pipes and along the top of the foundation leak too, and we seal them before basement insulation goes up. Where ducts run through the attic, closed-cell foam insulation, a dense foam that also blocks moisture, seals and insulates in the same pass.

Alhambra's Building Division requires permits for most residential construction work, and its list names interior remodeling, window replacement, wiring and duct work but not air sealing, so the list alone doesn't settle whether your job needs one. Because the city's building office decides what needs a permit, we check with them before work begins, and when a job needs one, we pull it and keep you informed through the inspections.

Most of our calls come from homeowners with a hot upstairs or an older house, and some from property managers planning a reroof or a remodel. When the roof or ceilings are being opened anyway, the leaks are easiest to reach, so I ask to be brought in before that work starts. We get the same calls on jobs in Monterey Park and San Gabriel.