We recently inspected a new construction, custom built home in Edina.  We did a team inspection at this property, where Neil, Duane, and I all inspected the house at the same time.  We really went over this house with a fine tooth comb, but we didn’t come up with much that was wrong – it was a very well built home.  Towards the end of the inspection, we asked the buyer if they would mind us opening up the attic access panel, which had been sprayed shut.  The buyer was fine with that, as most buyers are.  What we found was quite surprising.

The builder had taken all of the necessary steps to seal all of the bypasses to the attic,  by doing something most builders never do.  Before blowing in loose-fill fiberglass insulation, he had a company spray foam the ‘lid’ to really make sure that any potential bypasses to the attic would be completely sealed.  This isn’t required, but it’s a great idea.  Unfortunately, the person doing the insulation had missed a few areas, and this allowed a ton of frost in to the attic!

The builder was very glad we found this, and quickly had the insulation company back out to re-insulate the areas that were missed.  This is a great example of why it’s so important to break the attic access seal, and why it’s so important to have even new construction homes inspected, no matter how good the builder is.

The best builders will encourage their buyers to have private home inspections performed, and they’ll welcome any feedback from home inspectors.  This will not only prove to the buyer what a good house they’re buying, but can also save the builder from major potential problems in the future.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Edina Home Inspections

RELATED POSTS

A few posts ago I included several photos of attic problems in my blog Reasons to Insulate, and said I would come back to them in a later post with explanations.   Here we go!

This photo shows a bypass to the attic space around a furnace flue.  The square piece of metal is not sealed to the drywall, and there is a fair amount of air leaking into the attic space from this gap.  I brushed the insulation away to show the gap for the photo.  The insulation has turned black because of the air leakage – as the warm air passes through the insulation, the fiberglass acts like a filter and collects the dust / dirt particles in the air.  Any time you see darkened insulation, you can bet there is air leakage occuring.  This is often confused with mold because it looks similar.

In this photo the gap around the plumbing vent is allowing air in to the attic.  Notice the dark insulation?  An easy fix would be to fill the gap with expanding foam.

This photo shows several holes that wires pass through to get to the attic.  These holes could easily be sealed up with expanding foam.  I didn’t move any insulation to find these holes – this is exactly how the insulation looked when I climbed in to the attic, so there is obviously missing insulation here too.   The recommended insulation depth for loose fill fiberglass is 18″, but the silver areas have no insulation at all.

This is another attic space in desperate need of more insulation.  Someone probably moved the insulation away to install a ceiling fan, but never bothered to put it back.

There is a major attic bypass around this furnace flue, and this is one of the most common bypasses that I find.  You can clearly see the walls on the floor below, and you can even see the basement ceiling from this opening!  To correct this bypass, the owner will need to install a large piece of wood, metal, drywall, or any other material that air won’t pass through, and caulk all of the joints to make it airtight.  This wasn’t obvious just by looking, but I always make a point of pulling the insulation away around furnace flues to look for bypasses.  The fiberglass batt on the right side of the photo was sitting on top of this opening.

Hopefully these photos have helped to illustrate exactly what attic bypasses are and how to correct some of the issues.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections

With the cold weather officially here, it’s a good time to talk about insulation.  This is such a huge topic that I hardly know where to start!  There are so many different aspects to insulation that this will have to take up several blogs.  Today I’ll talk about why it’s important to have a well-insulated home.

Perhaps the most important reason to have a well-insulated home is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  While a recent survey conducted by Owens-Corning revealed that most Americans believe transportation and industry to be the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, in truth the largest contributor is buildings!  Buildings use 40% of our energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.  The number is even higher in Minnesota – 60 to 80 percent! The most cost effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to better insulate buildings.  Yes, this is even better than driving a hybrid vehicle, but it’s certainly not as hip.

The most obvious reason to better insulate your home is to reduce your heating and cooling bills – especially here in Minnesota.  Adding insulation to attic spaces is often a project that even unskilled homeowners can tackle, and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. Homeowners will typically see a payback in five to ten years. Adding insulation to poorly insulated walls is also a good thing to do and will surely help to save on heating and cooling costs, but this not as cost effective as adding insulation to an open attic area, as this will often require a professional to blow insulation in to the walls.

Arguably the most important reason to better insulate your home is to make it more comfortable. Even if a thermostat says it’s 70 degrees inside the home, poorly insulated walls will make a room feel much colder as the heat from your body radiates out to the relatively cold walls. In older houses with uneven heat, you may even have parts of the house that never warm up enough. I can tell you from experience that insulation makes an incredible difference in the comfort of a home. I live in a one-and-a-half story home with a finished upper level that used to be so cold in the winter that I couldn’t even use it. After re-insulating the upper level last year, I no longer need to heat the upper level! Enough heat rises up from the rest of the house to keep the upper floor so warm that I can shut off all the heat registers and it’s still comfortable.

There are many more reasons to properly insulate your home, but I’ll just mention one more that you’re surely aware of if you live in Minnesota; ice dams. While ice dams are a large subject on their own, suffice to say that lack of insulation can lead to large accumulations of ice at the edges of roofs that cause leaks in the home and destroy gutters.

In my next blog I’ll talk about how to determine whether more insulation is necessary, and what critical steps need to be taken before adding insulation. Hint: the photos throughout this blog all show homes with major room for improvement!

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections

Related Post: Photos Of Problems With Explanations

One of the biggest sources of contention I’ve had to deal with doing home inspections is whether or not a sealed attic access panel should be ‘broken’ to access the attic; even more specifically, whether or not I should be allowed to break the seal.  If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, here’s a photo of an attic access panel. To understand this issue, you need to understand why this panel is here and why it has been sealed.

First, the access panel is here because it is required by the Minnesota State Building Code.  The panel is here for me (or anyone else) to use to get in to the attic to inspect it, or to do work.  That’s it, plain and simple.  The Minnesota State Building Code, section R807.1 says

“…an attic access opening shall be provided to attic areas that exceed 30 square feet and have a vertical height of 30 inches or greater.”

This covers just about every attic space.  Outside of Minnesota, the building code will typically read the exact same way, as this is taken from the International Residential Code.

So why is the panel sealed?  In a new home, the panel only gets incidentally ‘sealed’.  The panel does not get attached to anything; it just gets set down on the opening. When the ceiling finish is applied, which is often spray texture, the seam between the panel and the rest of the ceiling gets covered over.  This is what people are referring to when they say the access has been ‘sealed.’  There is very rarely any caulking or adhesive keeping this panel in place.

This can become a subject of contention when I inspect a house where no one has been in the attic since the ceiling finish has been applied… or as most people say, the access has been sealed.  I say ‘sealed’ too, just because it’s easier than saying “incidentally covered over with a finished surface.”  My evaluation of the attic is a major part of a home inspection, and it’s important for buyers to know about any defects in the attic.  This is a place that homeowners may never even go in to as long as they own their home.  For this reason, I break the seal on just about every home I inspect, but I never do this without permission from the buyer.

The biggest sources of contention come from parties attending the inspection that are under the impression that attic spaces in new homes don’t need to be inspected.  Well, by that logic, new homes wouldn’t need to be inspected at all.  Please check out my blog on New Construction Inspections, and you’ll understand how important inspections are on newly built properties.  A large portion of the problems I find in new construction homes occur in the attic.  Just for fun, here’s a photo I took at a 2004 built Minneapolis townhouse – yes, this attic was completely uninsulated.  Don’t listen to anyone that tells you new attics don’t need to be inspected, or that attic access panels shouldn’t be opened.  They’re not looking out for your best interest, or they’ve been mis-informed.

Missing Insulation

The other common argument I hear about not going in the attic is that the panel will look bad after I open it.  This just isn’t true.  If a knife is used to cut the panel open, it will usually leave a noticeable scar in the ceiling, but if the panel is lightly bumped open, it will usually set back down and look almost identical to the way it did before I opened it.  Much of the time, you can’t even tell the difference between a sealed and unsealed panel unless you look closely.

The bottom line is that attic access panels are there for the attic to be accessed, and this is something that should be done at every home inspection.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections