Bonus Room Comfort Solution
Don’t be confused about radiant barriers. If you have high-bills and comfort problems, you do not need “radiant barrier”. There are plenty of folks and products that aim to reduce the temperature of the attic. What we do initially is air-seal the attic air-barrier, ducts, and protect your wall insulation from the attic so that in a way, it doesn’t matter how hot or cold your attic is. We only install radiant barrier to protect, align, and encapsulate the insulation, or as an air or vapor-barrier. Our radiant barrier is an insulation product, an air-barrier, and it happens to be reflective and come with an adhesive strip on one edge for excellent air-tightness.
skylights are tricky
air-sealing top-plates is tricky
If your skylights are accessible from the attic this is what we do, this is the ideal solution for poorly built and insulated skylights regardless of the presence of fiberglass in the cavities. This is 100% coverage and it is air-tight.
This homeowner noticed an immediate and drastic improvement in comfort and reduction in garage noise entering the home.
Our RADIANT BARRIER is insulated, consisting of closed cell foam (not bubble wrap like you can get at Lowes) with Reflective Metal and plastic on both sides. We use it because it is tough, rigid yet flexible, and can be easily stapled to framing. But remember, the purpose is air-sealing! In the above circumstances, this solution would not have worked without the new “Top and Bottom Plates”. If you have attic walls in your home can you tell if they have top-plates and bottom plates? This solution would also not have worked if we did not seal the lower tail of the insulated air-barrier to the drywall of the garage/master bedroom below. It would not have worked if we did not foam all the little gaps and tape the seems. For this kind of framing you can used a finish nailer with long finish nails rather than a framing nailer which might not fit into these really tight spaces. We would not have been able to stretch the Radiant Barrier over the R-19 wall insulation if the material was thin, paper based radiant barrier. (Update, we have begun folding the prodex over the missing top-plate to create a top-plate and the results are good.)
HERE IS ANOTHER BONUS ROOM COMFORT SOLUTION
… ON A RANCH HOME with a BONUS ROOM
Some homes have no “attic-walls”, some have lots. Some have 3rd floors instead of bonus rooms, some have trusses, others are stick built, either way, when we provide our “Bonus Room Comfort Solution”, we also provide a complete package of Attic-Air-Sealing so that no low-hanging fruit is left behind.
ATTIC AIR-SEALING and DUCT-SEALING is included with Bonus Room Comfort Solution work, Cape-Cod Comfort Solutions, 3rd floors…
DUCT SEALING IS ALWAYS INCLUDED
Adam, thank you so much for saving our bonus room. I can not believe that after 8 years of misery, you and Tim solved the problem in 6 hours and that it was so affordable. We had other quotes that we 4x higher and the scope was entirely different involving spray-foam and drywall removal. My neighbors (in the same predicament will be calling) have been referred to this page! Watch out for them.
I felt like commenting here on your article about our positive experience with [prodex] as installed by your company on our home.
Our upstairs comfort has gone from “bad” to “we never think about it anymore”.
We were thrilled that the solution was fast and thrifty and our knee-wall areas are so useful now that they have been cleaned, the insulation is hidden from view, and the lights were installed.
We could be no happier with the money we spent with your company to improve our attic spaces and comfort. We needed that storage space to be useful and it sure is.