It’s been warming up in the Bull City and our house is not impervious to the temperature apparently. Early on I had assumed that our spiral stairs to the partially finished attic would be a bane to the efficiency of the environmental controls in the house. Ah, how true. Although I suspected it was not the fault of the new HVAC system I called CWJ, the company that installed our new gas pack 3 months ago. The good news in this story is that the CWJ’s service was great. I called at around 7PM and they were out in about 20 minutes. Very thorough, very polite, and willing to talk about things unrelated to their system that I should do to improve the environment in the house. Try that with American Home Shield.

Which brings me to my next point: Attic ventilation. Why hasn’t anyone in the 64 years since my house was built think ventilation might be important? No idea. Perhaps the finishing of the attic has exacerbated things. Either way, I’ve got some work to do. First we’ll insulate the vestibule at the top of the stairs, then we’ll install some soffit venting to compliment the continuous ridge vent, and we’ll think about prying up the planking in the attic to increase the insulation between the attic and the ceiling below.

I’ve had this fantasy of blowing insulation into the walls of the house, too. However, I don’t want to damage the original asbestos siding and I hate to drill holes all over the plaster interior walls so that might not happen. Asbestos siding is actually super-high quality stuff and never needs to be repainted. Replacement windows are out. Our windows are lovely and new windows don’t let light through in the same way.

Tags: Cascadilla, durham, homebuying, hvac

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