Blown-in insulation in Davenport IA - warmer rooms and an attic that still breathes

At D&K Davenport Insulation Company, most calls start with a cold room upstairs, a drafty older house or a heating bill that won't quit. The price moves with the size of your attic, how many inches are already up there, how many gaps need sealing, the age of the house and whether old material has to come out first. The schedule turns on the same things, plus any repair that has to happen before we start, like a roof leak. When I come out, I'll measure it and give you your own number.

I run these jobs the way my dad taught me, in the right order. First I go up and check what's there, how deep it is, whether it's ever been wet and whether the vents at the eaves are clear. Then our crew does the air sealing, closing the gaps around can lights, pipes, wires and the attic hatch, so the new insulation isn't fighting a draft. We set baffles, short chutes that hold the fill back from the eaves, so those vents stay open and the attic can still breathe. Then we blow the fill in as evenly as we can, all the way out to the edges, because deep in the middle and thin at the edges is backward. I go over the finished attic with you, and our crew cleans up so the only thing you notice is the drafts are gone.

Sometimes the right answer isn't more insulation on top. If the old fill was soaked by a roof leak or is full of droppings, we do the insulation removal first, because new material over it just hides the problem. If the attic is only part of why your house is cold, our home insulation work looks at the walls, the crawl space and the room over the garage too. When your ductwork runs through the attic, spray foam costs more but seals air while it insulates, so it can earn its price there. For most attics, sealing the gaps and topping up with loose fill is still the better buy.

The city's Building and Land Development Services handles permits and inspections in Davenport, from the first application through the final sign-off. I won't guess whether your attic job needs a permit, so that office is where to ask. If it does, we take care of it with the city and tell you about it up front.

A lot of what we find on jobs here is older houses with a few settled inches up there, eave vents buried under old fill and gaps nobody ever sealed. Some older attics also hold vermiculite, a light, pea-size, flaky gray insulation that may contain asbestos. ENERGY STAR's advice is to leave it alone until an approved lab tests it, and your local health department can name a lab, so if I spot it, I'll point it out before anyone works up there. We're based in Davenport and work on both sides of the river, and we see the same older attics on jobs in Bettendorf and over in Rock Island, plus plenty of cities without their own page here.