Air sealing services in Davenport IA - a tighter house without the drafts

Most of the calls I get start with a cold room, a drafty older house or a power bill that doesn't make sense for the size of the place, and plenty of those houses already have a decent layer of attic insulation. The price turns on how many gaps there are, how hard they are to reach and how much old insulation we have to move aside to get at them. The schedule turns on what the appliance check finds and whether something like a roof leak has to be fixed first. I'll give you your own figure when I write the estimate at your house.

The first thing I look at is your furnace, water heater, stove and fireplace, because a tighter house changes how they get their air, and if the house will need more fresh air once it's sealed, I tell you before we start. Then I check the attic for roof leaks, old wiring, soaked or dirty insulation and bath fans blowing into the attic, because those get fixed before anything gets sealed over them. Our crew moves the old insulation aside where it covers the gaps and seals around can lights, pipes, wires, the tops of the walls and the attic hatch, then does the same around windows and doors downstairs. We keep the eave vents and any combustion air ducts open, since an attic that can't breathe ends up with moisture in the framing. Then we lay the insulation back so the edges are as deep as the middle, clean up after ourselves, and I go over the finished job with you.

Sealing is often only half the fix. If the cold is coming up from below, the wood band where the house sits on the foundation is one of the leakiest spots in the house, and we usually pair sealing it with basement insulation. Foam costs more because it seals and insulates at once, so I only steer you toward closed-cell foam insulation, a dense foam that also blocks moisture, when your ductwork runs through the attic. Otherwise sealing the gaps and topping up the loose fill already up there usually does the job for less.

The state health department says the EPA considers all of Iowa high risk for radon, a gas that comes up out of the ground, and that high levels can turn up in any kind of house. A leaky attic ceiling makes the house pull air up out of the soil the way a chimney pulls smoke, so sealing it means fewer soil gases like radon get drawn inside. We count that as a side benefit, not a reason to skip a test, because the state says everyone should test their home.

We're based in Davenport and work in cities on both sides of the river, in Iowa and Illinois. The older houses here usually leak in the same places, around chimneys, can lights and attic hatches nobody ever sealed, and we find the same thing on jobs in Bettendorf and over in Rock Island. If your job turns out to need a permit, we take care of it with the city and tell you up front.