Knucklehead Insulation Strikes Again

Shortly after we bought our house, my dad poked around in our side attics and mumbled something about how the insulation was all messed up. At the time, my main priority was on the creature comforts of my 3 month old daughter, which had nothing to do with insulation. So ignored my dad's observation for a few years, until an unrelated roof leak called me up to the side attics. Sure enough, the insulation was a mess.

The top half of the roof is actually properly insulated, with rigid foam, a thermal barrier, and about a 1.5" air gap between the foam and the roof decking. The guys who installed that section knew what they were doing.

Some clowns did a far worse thing on the bottom half of the roof: R-11 insulation jammed all the way up to the roof decking. R-11? In the attic in New England? The attic in my region is supposed to be at least R-38, ideally more like R-60. Why not just hang up a bedsheet and call that insulation? These bozos also didn't know anything about insulation's tricky pal, ventilation. By blocking the airflow at the lowest part of the roof, the job effectively blocked ventilation through the entire roof, rendering the ridge vent worthless. Thus the roof bakes in the summer, which in turn raises the temperature of the top floor, which forces me to shell out way more money for air conditioning.

We have a few knee wall doors which also exhibit a 1980's "who gives a shit?" attitude in regards to heating costs. In the winter time, our precious heat goes right out the knee wall doors, into the side attic, through the R-11 faux insulation, and right up to a pitch change in the roof deck. Nice warm air hitting the lower portion of a roof in the winter is a recipe for something I hate more than the 1980's LA Lakers: ice dams. The escaping warm air contributes to uneven roof temperatures, which, to make a long story short, are the basic cause of ice dams. So the shoddy insulation job leads to more than just inefficient heating. It wears out the roof much faster than it should (hello, $8,000 roof job) and it causes ice dams which--in case you didn't know--lead to water trickling inside your house in ways you thought were impossible.

You can bet I'll be fixing this problem soon with air chutes, rigid foam insulation, and a thermal barrier.