Improved Indoor Air Quality in Millersville Home

Challenge

This client felt perpetually plagued by visits to the doctor’s office. He experienced constant respiratory and general health problems with his allergies (and was becoming increasingly agitated with them). After repeated visits, his doctor finally suggested that the problem might be with his house. He told him to get a professional to come out and evaluate how “healthy” his home was and hopefully provide some recommendations on how to improve it (this is where we come in).

Solution

Here’s what we found. An attic that is not air sealed or insulated can have many negative effects, possibly the biggest one being to your health (which is what this client was experiencing). When left unsealed, air flows freely in and out of the attic, allowing for pollutants and allergens to travel with it and circulate in your living area (where you will breath them in). We can stop this from happening while simultaneously upgrading the house’s home performance. The first thing that we had to do was to remove the old, deteriorated insulation that was laying around in the attic. Once that was gone, we had access to the top plates, electrical bypasses, ceiling fixture penetrations, etc, and could seal them properly. We also needed to seal the duct system (there was a substantial amount of air leakage happening here). Part of this, we did with duct mastic and spray foam. For the majority of the duct work, though, we used a new aerosol spray system which allows for the ducts to be sealed even when they are behind walls, ceilings, and floors (very convenient for cases like this). After air sealing everything up, we had to install some insulation (enough to bring levels up to R-49). We chose to blow in fiberglass insulation to achieve this. These improvements work together to create astounding results. The homeowner has already reported feeling healthier in their home as a result of our work and is enjoying all of that time he no longer has to spend at the doctor’s office! We love working on cases like this where we can really show off why the work that we do is important. 

If you, or anybody you know, are experiencing anything similar to what this client was going through, don’t hesitate to call us at (410) 867-1202 and we’ll be happy to help you too!

Here is what we use for the aeroseal duct sealing process. Again, this is a great machine that does a very effective job of getting your ducts sealed air tight so that they can operate at maximum efficiency.

Here's an example of how we air seal the ceiling penetrations with caulking. We pay a lot of attention to detail and want to get in all of those seams and cracks.

In this picture you can see two things. The white block is the duct work in the attic that we have covered with spray foam. The pink stuff is the fiberglass insulation.