Before & After Photos

This homeowner in South Deerfield, MA called us wanting his old attic insulation removed and replaced. 

Removing old blown-in insulation is not an easy task. When you have fiberglass batts, you are able to simply bag them up and dispose of them. However, with blown-in, you need a very powerful vacuum to remove all of the loose insulation. 

In order to achieve this, our team at Fogarty's Home Services took a large hose up to the homeowner's attic. We then started vacuuming up the blown-in, making sure that we got into every hard-to-reach area. 

Now, the attic is prepared and ready for air sealing and fresh insulation! 

The owner of a beautiful brick home in West Springfield, MA contacted Fogarty's Home Services to help insulate his home. He was experiencing cold drafts and wanted to resolve this issue. One of our Home Comfort Specialists discovered that there were sloped stairwell ceilings that were open to the attic when conducting this homeowner's free home energy evaluation. When a stairwell has a sloped ceiling forming a big triangular space that is open to the attic, it creates a heat loss (winter) and heat gain (summer) problem in the home. The sidewalls of the open well into the attic are hard to insulate and often leak air from the walls of your house into the attic. The stairwell ceiling radiates heat from the house in to the attic, and from the hot attic to the house in the summer. Insulating the attic properly is not possible with this big stairwell hole in it. Fogarty's Home Services installed a cover made of wood over this stairwell at the attic floor level. Appropriate framing and wood sheets were used. The cover was sealed with expanding polyurethane foam to make it airtight. Blown insulation can now be installed over the attic floor and the stairwell cover. The sturdy cover doesn't pose a fall hazard if someone crawls into the attic in the future. Now, this happy customer is reporting less air leakage, less unwanted heat loss and heat gain, and the attic can be insulated properly.

This homeowner's basement windows were old, leaky, and inefficient. In the past, home builders paid little attention to the energy efficiency of basement windows, often choosing the cheapest option available. This leaves single pane glass windows with metal frames that let lots of cold air leak into the home. Single pane clear glass lets heat from the home escape by conduction through the cold glass. Metal is highly thermally conductive and a poor material for a window frame - it rusts in the damp environment near the ground and leaks a LOT of air.  Fogarty's Home Services removed the old windows and frames and installed New Everlast™ basement windows. These sliding windows have double pane glass with a specially metallic "Low E" coating on the inside of both panes of glass to reduce heat flow in or out through the glass. The frame and sashes are made completely from vinyl - the perfect material for a window so close to the ground in a damp environment - they will never rust, rot, or need paint. And Everlast™ windows are a big improvement over the way your home looks - great! This happy customer now has a warmer basement, warmer floors above the basement, less drafts, less condensation, lower overall home air leakage, and lower energy bills.

The second floor of a Cape suffers from inadequate insulation, and air leaks from the soffits into poorly insulated kneewall spaces. This results in cold drafty rooms in winter that are harder than necessary to heat, and hot rooms in the summer as roof heat radiates in unchecked. Kneewall spaces are dusty and too cold or hot which is unsuitable for clean storage.

First, our SilverGlo™ foam insulation panels are installed on the bottom of the rafters in the kneewall spaces and the ceiling joist bays are blocked and sealed with foam to stop air leakage. Then the roof slopes are dense packed with TruSoft™ cellulose insulation to stop air flow and insulate. Finally, the flat ceiling is insulated with TruSoft™ cellulose insulation.

This homeowner in Chicopee, MA called us with issues he was having with his energy bills being extremely high. He had original insulation from when the house was first built -- meaning the blown-in fiberglass insulation was over 50 years old and showing its age! We were able to help this customer by re-insulating his attic. We first sealed the many various points where air in his home was leaking into the attic. We then sealed and insulated other spots in his attic that were more tricky. We then replaced that insufficient fiberglass with blown-in TruSoft™ cellulose insulation -- keeping his energy bills lower and his home more comfortable.