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Is there insulation in my room next to the garage?

4/2/2013

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Often times, bedrooms closest to the garage or bonus rooms above the garage get the hottest during a summer in Phoenix, AZ... and for good reason. Usually, the garage is hot and remains hotter than the outside, even well into the night. All that heat built up during the day takes time to dissipate, and a lot of it gets transferred into the home, causing adjacent rooms to heat up more than the rest of the house.  

Here is how you can check if there is insulation present in the walls from the house to the garage. (Please note, our outside garage walls are never insulated because this is technically unconditioned space).

  1. For safety, turn off the electricity at the breaker to the garage and adjacent rooms' outlets.
  2. Take a flat head screw driver and unscrew an electrical outlet that is on the wall in question.
  3. Use a paper clip, drill bit or screw driver and push it in between the blue electrical box and the drywall gap.
  4. If there is insulation, you will feel a bouncy resistance when you push in... that is your fiberglass batt insulation! If you feel nothing, you may not have any and I suggest drilling a hole in between the studs and performing the check again to verify.
  5. You may also be able to see in the drywall gap with a flashlight and visually see the insulation, it will be either pink fiberglass batts or a white color.
  6. If you don't have any outlets, you can drill a small hole with a drill bit in a hidden spot in the wall and perform the same check.


Surprisingly though, as a Phoenix energy auditor, this is not the sole cause of those adjacent rooms getting warmer than the rest of the house in the summer. In fact, in more than the 1,000 home energy audits we have done, 100% of the rooms adjacent to the garage walls and ceiling were insulated. Now were they insulated properly? Possibly... but still, don't get hung up on the wall insulation.  

After performing an energy audit, we have been able to diagnose and correct the cause of the rooms heating up and it is attributed to three things in order of the most common causes.

  1. Poor airflow
  2. How the insulation was installed in the attic
  3. Leaks from the duct work 
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Does My Attic Insulation Need To Be Removed?

4/1/2013

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You may have an older home built in the 60's, 70's, or even 80's with that beautiful original insulation still working away in your attic. You may have had a peek at it and been reminded of some landscape out of a bad dream... you may have even been able to see your studs popping above the insulation. As Phoenix home energy auditors, we often get asked, "does my attic insulation need to be removed before you install new insulation?" Well we are here to tell you that 95% of the time the answer is no, it does not need to be removed. Even though it may look like sand or have more dust in it than your old record collection, it still has its insulation properties, however diminished they may be. By simply adding the appropriate insulation type on top (or sometimes beneath) your existing insulation, our energy improvement technicians can get your attic super insulated and help make a more comfortable home.

So when would you need to have your attic insulation removed, or extracted as we say in the biz. There are times when removing that old insulation should be done and is recommended, and they are listed below.

  1. When the insulation is water damaged from a roof or pipe leak and has become hard and crusty.
  2. When the insulation has become rodent infested (yes I am thinking of you, out-lander or larger-than-an-acre-of-land homeowners). Rats and critters can make massive nests out of all types of insulation, cactus and twigs and multiply, multiply, multiply.  This is a potentially hazardous scenario in your attic and in the air you breathe inside your house, and should be immediately corrected.

Those are the only two reasons why your insulation should be extracted from your attic, however there are other arguments that merit mention here.

  1. Insulation sensitivity and allergic reactions. if you are hyper sensitive to your insulation, we have had clients ask us to extract and replace their insulation with a more green, dust and chemical free insulation products.
  2. You are preparing for a major remodel... raising the ceilings, adding features or opening up rooms in your home merit insulation removal as part of the prep work.
  3. You just want a greener insulation product... although the removal and disposal of your existing insulation into a landfill is not so green.


Do you have any opinions on insulation removal or have you done it before?  Leave us your comments below to share your story.
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