Insulation

Visionary prides themselves on having energy efficient, comfortable homes.  In fact, that was one of the selling points that really attracted us to them.

All of our vents in the attic are extremely well insulated.

When it came time to insulate inside the house they use net and blown insulation.  First they had a sub walk through with a can of spray foam insulation and he filled in every crack.  Then they put the net up.  It was fun watching the sub with the staple gun go to town making sure the net was securely fastened to all the studs.  We were relieved to see the "net" was really a thin fabric.  We had images in our head of nets or netting and couldn't imagine how that would hold anything in place. 

Then the sub with the hose went through and filled in all the cavities. 

I thought it was interesting how the sheetrockers actually sliced through the net in several places before they put the drywall in place. I guess some of the cavities were a little over full and they wanted to make sure the drywall didn't budge. (by the way - people in the know....what is the difference between sheetrock and drywall? are they interchangeable? should I use one term instead of the other? is it like Kleenex vs. tissue?  I'm just curious, leave a comment and let me know)

Once the insulation was up we were really able to get a feel for the size of the rooms.

They even insulated between the great room and the master bedroom.  We assumed they'd have to insulate behind the fireplace, but were thrilled to see it go across the whole wall.  That will help with soundproofing and help keep the different zones moderated.

It's interesting to go into the garage and see all the different insulation types.  Here you see an exterior wall (pink batts) and an interior wall (blown and net)

These are all exterior walls in the smaller garage, so they used the fiberglass batts.  We are curious why the batts in the bottom section are brown.  We assume it has something to do with fire retardant because we were told the bracing between the studs is there to slow down fires from traveling up the walls.

It was really cool to show up and see how the attic furnace room was completely covered with icynene foam.  They scraped the bottom flat so they could get the sheetrock up on the garage ceiling. 

To me it looks like the beginning of Hansel and Gretel's Gingerbread Cottage.  It just needs some gingerbread and candies!

That's the stuff Justin wanted to put between the joists after we were done running the PEX for the main floor radiant heat.  His quote came in SO HIGH that we said no thanks...we'll just do the insulation ourselves.

We were going to install fiberglass batts between the joists to save money (and I was NOT looking forward to that job), but we had Jesse get us a quote from the insulation subs just to see what they would charge.  I told Rob if it was less than $1500 I wanted to have them do it.  His threshold was $1000 so we compromised and said $1200.  They came in under a grand so it was an easy yes.  They had it done so much quicker than we could have and we didn't have to deal with the itchies for a week. 

Hooray!  With the insulation up the house is quieter and cooler.  Just like it's supposed to be.