Crawl space insulation in Alhambra CA - warmer floors, done in the right order

If your floors feel cold in winter or the house runs drafty down low, the crawl space is usually where I look first, because heat slips out through a bare floor and air comes up through every gap. The price mostly follows the size of the crawl space, how easy it is to get into, whether old material has to come out and whether we insulate the walls or the floor. The schedule turns on what we find down there, since old pipe wrap or a needed permit adds a step before we can start. Once I've been under the house, I can give you your own figure.

I start by going under the house to see what's there, because the main choice, insulating the crawl space walls or the floor above, depends on it. Before anything gets closed up, we check for fuel-burning equipment like a furnace or water heater and for old wrap on the pipes and ducts, since both change what's safe to do. Then our crew seals the holes in the subfloor around plumbing and wiring so the new insulation isn't fighting a draft, and we fit the insulation snug with no gaps or squashed spots. We finish by clearing out our scraps and walking you through what we did.

Crawl space work often connects to the rest of the house. When cold also comes through the outside walls, wall insulation is usually the next thing I'd look at, and when air is leaking at the attic hatch, outlets and plumbing runs, our air sealing services close those gaps so the insulation throughout the house can do its job.

The City of Alhambra requires plans and permits for most residential construction work, including remodels and alterations, and the state's energy commission lists adding insulation under an existing raised floor as an example of an alteration. Whether your job needs a permit is for the city's Building Division to decide, so we check with them before work begins, and when it needs one, we pull it and keep you informed through the inspections. Only properly licensed contractors, or people exempt from the state licensing law, can pull that permit in Alhambra, and on a permitted job the city's check of everyone working on it takes about two weeks before the permit is finalized, so I plan for that wait.

Many of the houses we work on here and in San Gabriel and South Pasadena are older homes on raised floors, with ducts and pipes running underneath and a small hatch to get in. That's why I look under the house before I quote, since the age of the home tells me a lot about what might be wrapped around those pipes.