Leon, an attic specialist, identifies five critical issues in 1970s-80s Calgary homes: insufficient insulation (aim for R-50 minimum), damaged vapor barriers causing heat loss and ceiling stains, poor ventilation leading to frost buildup, and unsealed bathroom exhaust fans that trap moist air and create mold.
All right, I am here with Leon today. Leon is our attic expert in the field, does estimates, grew up in an attic. And so we are talking cold weather, and it's hitting us right now in Calgary. And so I'm gonna be asking Leon, what are the 4 or 5 things that you're looking at when you jump up into someone's attic?
First couple things I'm looking at is the type of insulation that they have. Then I'm gonna be checking out the vapor barrier just to see what's intact. Is it a wax paper or a poly vapor barrier? From there, I'm going to be looking at the ventilation of the home, making sure we have enough fresh air coming in to diminish frost. From there, I'm also going to go out and check the bath fans just to make sure everything's 100% sealed up. We want to ensure those warm vapors aren't shooting off into a cold attic. That's just a chance for mold.
Yeah, for sure. So let's, let's first kind of unpack the first part. What you said there is attic insulation, the amount of blown-in or batt insulation. What kind of R-value should a house have in our climate?
So for a renovation, typically we're looking at achieving at minimum an R-50. For a new home being built tomorrow without a heat recovery unit, it's by code to have an R-60 up in their attic space.
Okay, so how many inches would that be typically?
Ooh, depends on the type of insulation that you have up there. So all insulation has a different type of R-value. So we really take that into account when we're gauging the depth and the R-value of insulation.
We often talk about how the R-value is just part of the factor when it comes to keeping your home efficient. Stopping airflow, is a big part of that for us. You mentioned vapor barrier a little bit. What happens if we have breaks in our vapor barrier, seams, or no vapor barrier?
So if we have breaks or no vapor barrier, what's happening is all this heat from the home is making its way into the attic space. It's heating that frost, and it's really causing attic rain. It creates a lot of problems from down under, and then we'll see that brown staining on the ceiling.
Yeah, it's crazy how that hot air, it'll always condense on the warm side of the cold substrate. So that would be the underside of the roof And then when it warms up, that'll melt and come down. And there's one way that we can kind of help minimize that risk, and that's ventilation. You want to talk about ventilation a little bit?
So for ventilation, we also want to make sure we have enough fresh air getting drawn into the attic at a very good rate. We want to make sure everything is laid out properly, therefore we can have ample airflow throughout the whole attic. We want to make sure we're hitting all of the areas and we're not missing any.
Perfect. Well, if you have questions about your attic and you're wondering, is it safe? Is it healthy? Is it efficient? Are you actually heating Alberta right now? Well, you want to give us a call and get Leon to crawl around into the attic a little bit. We would love to help you out with that. Also, if you haven't already, like and subscribe to this channel. It helps us produce more great content like this for people like you. Bye.
