Clean Crawls

Met with Gavin Spesock of Clean Crawls this morning. For $1.10 a square foot, his company will clean out the attic, removing all the old rock wool insulation, rat droppings, cobwebs and anything else that shouldn't be there. That's 1362 x 1.10 = $1500. (Actual bid $1,639.22 with tax.)

He said the rock wool is maybe R-19, but the current standard is R-49. You can pile new insulation on the old--"it just depends on your comfort level." He also recommends soffit vents--there are none now. I told him the gap seemed too small; he disagreed, after looking. He says the gap we have is typical and that the square inches add up. The alternative is to punch through the roof with vents similar to what they've already installed--the existing roof jacks are up high; we need to install some low, or figure out soffit vents.

In the basement, there's not much they can do if I'm switching out the heating system. They would replace the existing damaged vapor barrier (clear) with 6 mil black polyethylene (the current standard). There is a fair amount of stuff still in the crawl space--an old single panel door, and possibly a stack of shutters--and unless I want them to haul it off, I'd have to deal with it myself.

We agreed that the first thing is clean the attic, then have them back to assess the situation once we know what we're doing in more detail.

He also mentioned that we are not eligible for a rebate on wall insulation because it's not currently an empty cavity. If we remove all insulation in the attic, then install a new heating system, he can get a rebate on the new attic insulation. The rebates come from Puget Sound Energy, the gas company.