Greater Lansing
Attic insulation
Go and measure it before anybody sells you anything: a tape measure pushed to the attic floor in three places is the whole diagnostic. Then here is the order the work has to happen in, and the four things that get checked before any material goes down.
What is actually wrong
Go and measure what you have before anybody sells you anything. A tape measure pushed down to the attic floor is the whole diagnostic: most older houses in this area are somewhere between three and seven inches, which is a fraction of what this climate asks for, and a surprising number have nothing at all over an addition or a dormer. Federal guidance for an attic in this climate zone lands around R-49 to R-60, which is roughly fourteen to twenty inches of blown material depending on which material it is. The gap between what is up there and that number is the entire opportunity, and you can establish it yourself in five minutes.
But depth is the second question, not the first. Insulation slows heat and does nothing about moving air, so insulation laid over an unsealed attic floor leaves the house working like a chimney and underperforms whatever the label on the bag says. The order is air sealing, then baffles at the eaves, then insulation. That order is not a preference and it is not an upsell — it is the difference between a job that works and a job that measures correctly and feels the same. Air sealing has its own page here and it comes first for that reason.
Four things get checked before any material goes down, and each one can stop the job: non-IC-rated recessed light fittings in the ceiling below, which must not be buried; knob-and-tube wiring, which was designed to shed heat into open air; vermiculite, the loose gray-brown pellets found in houses from before about 1990, which is treated as asbestos-containing until sampled; and bathroom or kitchen fans discharging into the attic, which will make the new insulation wet. None of the four is rare in Lansing housing stock and all four are routinely insulated straight over.
What is already up there usually stays. Old fiberglass that is dry, undisturbed and not compressed is still doing its job and new material goes over the top of it — blown over batts is normal and fine. It comes out when it is wet, moldy, rodent-fouled, or when it has to be lifted to reach the air sealing underneath, which is the common reason.
And the local pattern worth knowing: a great deal of Lansing and East Lansing housing is one-and-a-half stories with kneewalls, dormers and sloped ceilings. Those are the hardest attics to get right and the ones where a flat depth figure means least — the heat is leaving through the kneewall and the slope, not through the flat part somebody can walk on.
Where this stops
When it is not a handyman job
This is at the top of the page rather than the bottom because getting it wrong costs you a wasted visit. Insured, and no contractor license is claimed or implied — the Michigan residential builder license is not held.
- Non-IC recessed light fittings must never be buried in insulation or sealed over — the clearance around them is a fire protection measure. They get replaced with an airtight IC-rated fitting by a licensed electrician or boxed to maintain clearance, and insulation goes over neither until that is settled.
- Knob-and-tube wiring in an attic is a stop. Burying it in insulation is a fire risk and it needs a licensed electrician’s assessment before anything covers it.
- Vermiculite insulation — loose gray-brown pellets, typically pre-1990 — is treated as asbestos-containing until a sample says otherwise. It is not moved, vacuumed, swept, sealed over or insulated on top of, and it is not this company’s work. Sampling comes first.
- Soffit intake ventilation is never blocked to fit more insulation in. Baffles first, always. An attic insulated into its own eaves is how this work turns into a moisture and ice dam problem instead of fixing one.
- Spray foam is not offered. Closed-cell and open-cell foam are a specialist install with their own equipment and curing requirements and are expensive to reverse rather than easy to top up.
- No roof work and no roof coverings. A leak above the insulation is a roofer’s, and insulation does not go back under a roof that is still letting water in.
- Combustion safety belongs with a licensed mechanical contractor where there is an atmospherically vented furnace or water heater, and that check comes before a house is tightened rather than after.
- We do not guarantee an energy saving figure. The measured depth and a before-and-after blower door reading are real numbers and will be given honestly; a predicted dollar saving depends on fuel price, weather and how a household lives.
- Rebate program participation is not claimed here. BPI Building Analyst certification is in progress and Michigan Home Energy Rebates contractor registration is in progress; what each program pays for and what can be applied for today is on the energy rebates page.
The work itself
What actually gets done
Measure and photograph what is actually up there — material, depth and coverage — and give you the figures rather than a verdict.
Air seal the attic floor first, which is a separate scope on the quote rather than something assumed into an insulation price.
Fit baffles at every rafter bay at the eaves, so the soffit intake ventilation stays open once the depth goes up.
Blow loose-fill insulation to a marked, measured depth, with depth markers left in place so anybody can check it afterwards.
Install batts where batts are the right answer — kneewalls, sloped sections, small or awkward areas, and over a floored attic that has to stay usable.
Insulate and weatherstrip the attic hatch, and build a sealed insulated cover for it, because the hatch is usually the worst spot in the ceiling.
Dam and keep clearance around flues, chimneys and any fitting that requires it, before the depth goes up and the clearance becomes invisible.
Remove existing insulation where it is wet, fouled or in the way of the sealing underneath, bagged and taken away.
Insulate the kneewalls and the sloped sections in a one-and-a-half story house, which is where the heat in that house shape is actually going.
Leave a written record with photographs and the measured depth, which is what a rebate assessment and any future contractor will both ask for.
This work sits inside General Repairs, which carries the invoiced price bands for the trade with the sample size printed beside every figure.
What it costs
There is no price list for this, and here is what actually decides the number.
The same three words describe a twenty-minute job and a two-day one. Rather than publish a figure that is wrong for one of them, here is what moves it — so you can work out roughly which end of it you are at before anybody comes out.
Area, and how much of it is reachable on your knees versus on your stomach.
The gap between the depth that is there and the depth you want, which is what decides how much material goes in.
Whether the air sealing is being done first, which it should be, and how many chases and penetrations there are.
Whether anything has to come out, and whether it has to come out in bags down through the house.
Recessed fittings, flues and anything else needing a dam or a licensed electrician before depth goes over it.
House shape. A plain attic over a single story, and a one-and-a-half story with kneewalls and dormers, are different jobs at the same square footage.
Whether the attic is floored and has to stay usable for storage, which changes the method entirely.
Access. A hatch in a cupboard ceiling changes the labor on every item above it.
How to get a real number
Somebody comes out, looks at it properly, and you get a fixed price in writing with the work set out line by line and the exclusions written down as plainly as the inclusions. Coming out to do that is not charged for, and neither is working out what is wrong. If something is found once a wall or a floor is open, it is priced as a written change order and you decide before the work carries on rather than after it is billed. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, first-time customers get 10% off labor, and labor carries a one-year craftsmanship warranty.
If this is happening right now
What to do in the next five minutes, and what happens when you ring.
Before anybody arrives
- Measure it. Push a tape measure down to the attic floor in three or four places and write the numbers down — that is the only fact you need before any conversation, and it is free.
- Photograph what the material looks like. Fiberglass batts, loose gray cellulose, and loose gray-brown pellets are three very different situations and the third one stops everything.
- Look at the eaves from inside the attic. If insulation is stuffed into them, the roof’s intake ventilation is already blocked.
- Look for daylight and for dark staining on the underside of the roof deck. Staining means moisture, and moisture means something else has to be fixed first.
- Count the recessed light fittings in the ceilings below and check for a label inside one.
- Find out where the bathroom fan discharges. Into the attic is common and it will ruin new insulation.
- Check the addition and the dormers separately. They are frequently far worse than the main attic and nobody looks.
- Do not add insulation over wet or moldy material. Find out why it is wet first.
Call the business line
(517) 505-7135Answered Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00. There is no out-of-hours line and this page is not going to invent one — outside those hours, leave a message with the address and what is happening, and it is picked up in the morning.
On the call you get asked what is happening, what else in the building is affected, and whether it is still getting worse. That is how it gets decided whether this is our job at all — and if it is not, you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out.
- No trip charge
- No call-out fee or minimum
- No diagnostic fee
- No charge for a return visit
True across all 84 written quotes this company has issued. Most contractors in this market charge to turn up.
Or send the detailsWhen the right answer is not this company
- You can smell gas
- Leave the building and call the utility from outside. Not us, and not later.
- Water you cannot stop
- Your main shut-off first, then a licensed plumber. Every minute of this one costs money.
- Sewage backing up, or several fixtures at once
- A licensed plumber with a camera. That is the shared line, not a fixture, and a cable down one sink will not touch it.
- Sparking, scorching or a burning smell at an outlet or a panel
- Breaker off, and a licensed electrician. Electrical work here is repair and like-for-like replacement, and this is neither.
- No heat, or heating and cooling equipment that has failed
- A licensed mechanical contractor. That trade is not offered here at all, and knowing that in one phone call is worth more than a visit.
Questions people actually ask
How much insulation should a Michigan attic have?
Federal guidance for this climate zone lands around R-49 to R-60, which is roughly fourteen to twenty inches of blown material depending on whether it is cellulose or fiberglass. Most older houses around Lansing measure somewhere between three and seven inches, and plenty have nothing over an addition or a dormer. You can establish your own figure in five minutes with a tape measure pushed down to the attic floor in three or four places, and that number is worth having before you talk to anybody.
Do I need to air seal before insulating the attic?
Yes, and it is the thing that decides whether the money was well spent. Insulation slows heat but does nothing about moving air, and air passes straight through fiberglass — so insulation over an unsealed attic floor leaves the house working like a chimney and underperforms whatever the bag claims. Seal the attic floor, fit baffles at the eaves, then insulate. Doing it in that order also costs less overall, because once a foot of loose material is down, reaching the top plates and chases underneath it is several times the work.
Can I just add new insulation on top of the old?
Usually, yes. Old fiberglass that is dry, undisturbed and not compressed is still working and blown material goes straight over the top of it — blown over batts is completely normal. It comes out when it is wet, moldy or rodent-fouled, or when it has to be lifted to reach the air sealing underneath, which is the most common reason by far. What you should not do is add insulation over material that is wet without finding out why it is wet, because the new layer hides the cause and gets ruined by it.
What is the gray-brown pellet insulation in my attic?
If it looks like loose pellets rather than fiberglass or shredded paper — small, lightweight, gray-brown, sometimes shiny or accordion-like — it may be vermiculite, and a lot of the vermiculite used in American attics before about 1990 was contaminated with asbestos. Treat it as asbestos-containing until a sample says otherwise: do not move it, vacuum it, sweep it, seal over it or insulate on top of it, and close the hatch. Sampling comes first and the result decides who does anything next. This is not work this company takes on.
Can you insulate over recessed lights and old wiring?
Not safely, and both are a stop rather than a caution. Non-IC-rated recessed fittings are built to shed heat into clear air, so the clearance around them is a fire protection measure — they get replaced with airtight IC-rated fittings by a licensed electrician or boxed to maintain clearance. Knob-and-tube wiring was likewise designed to lose its heat to open air and burying it in insulation is a fire risk, so it needs a licensed electrician to look at it first. Both are common in houses of this age around here and both get routinely insulated straight over by people in a hurry.
Why is my upstairs still hot or cold after insulation was added?
Three usual reasons. The air sealing was never done, so the house is still moving air through the new material. The eaves got blocked, so the roof is no longer ventilating. Or the house is a one-and-a-half story and the heat is leaving through the kneewalls and sloped ceilings rather than the flat part somebody could walk on and measure. That last one is very common in Lansing and East Lansing housing and it is the reason a depth figure on its own can be misleading.
Will insulation stop ice dams?
Insulation plus air sealing usually will, and insulation alone frequently will not — because ice dams are caused by heat escaping into the attic and warming the roof deck, and the heat mostly escapes with the air that carries it. That is why the sequence matters and why blocking the eaves while adding depth can make it worse, by removing the ventilation that keeps the deck cold. There is a fuller piece on this in the blog, and the short version is that the ridge of ice at the gutter is a symptom of the ceiling rather than a fault in the roof.
What does attic insulation cost, and is there a rebate?
There is no rate card. It is set by the area and how much of it you can reach on your knees, the gap between the depth that is there and the depth you want, whether anything has to come out, whether the air sealing is being done first, what the recessed fittings and flues need, and the shape of the house. On rebates: four Michigan programs pay toward insulation and air sealing and one of them has no income test at all, which is set out on the energy rebates page. Where this company stands is stated plainly there too — BPI Building Analyst certification is in progress and Michigan Home Energy Rebates contractor registration is in progress, and you can apply for income verification today regardless.
Do you work in Lansing, Haslett, East Lansing, Okemos and Holt?
Yes — Greater Lansing and the towns around it, which is where almost all of this company’s work is.
Book an attic insulation survey
Send us three depth measurements and a photograph of what the material looks like, and we can tell you most of what you need to know before anyone drives out. Somebody then goes up, checks the four things that can stop the job, and puts a fixed price in writing with the measured depth on it. Coming out is free, and there is no trip charge.