Long overdue home improvements cost us major money recently, but they have brought us more comfort, better health, and will pay us back over the long haul. No, we didn’t go solar, but we talked long and studied hard on the matter. We would have broken even upon our deaths. Not enough incentive. Instead we used the approximate cost of solar in a different way, a much needed way.
First, we had a new metal roof put on our house last fall. It cost us $14k, but it was time. That was when we did the solar math. It didn’t matter whether we purchased or leased solar panels. The payback would take 20 years.
Instead we put the money toward a complete and total replacement of our 25-year-old attic insulation and our 45-year-old duct work. Let me tell you, we are so happy with the results.
It’s easy to neglect attic insulation and duct-work. It can’t be seen and its impact on daily life is difficult to pinpoint. It’s hard to do a cost-benefit analysis of energy saved by an attic overhaul. However, there are other factors besides simply saving energy.
Here is the home world we have been tolerating for too many years:
Dust. Dust everywhere all the time. Dust on counter tops, appliances, book shelves, fan blades, stuck to monitors and screens. We dusted, we wiped, we vacuumed to stay ahead of it. Dust is common in most homes so we didn’t automatically equate it with worn out, loose, faulty, gapped duct work. For us it was like battling weeds without herbicides, an endless struggle.
Drafts of cold air would waft over us in our living room while watching television. We kept blankets beside the couch to keep us warm during late night viewing. We kept sweaters in the front hall closet. We sealed our doors and windows anew. We kept the door leading down to the garage closed at all times. We chronically, persistently shut every door in the house and kept them shut. It became a habit to shut doors to fight drafts.
Walking to the kitchen in the early dawn to brew coffee required that I put on socks or slippers because the hallway floor was always so cold. We couldn’t turn the heat on at night, or even set the thermostat to low. We had to completely turn off our furnace every evening before diving under the bed covers.
Why? Because our bedroom vent is the closest tentacle to the furnace, and when the heat came on, our bedroom would heat up immediately while the rest of the house remained cold. With the thermostat being down the hall, responding to the chilly temperatures of the kitchen and living room, having the heat on at night meant turning our bedroom into a sweat lodge.
We both like a cold bedroom anyhow, so we demurred for years. We prefer to stay snug under double quilts and leave the windows open. However, a wee bit of heat would have been nice. Many a morning I’ve gone to our kitchen past our thermostat reading 54 – 58 degrees. If I turn up the heat, by the time I return to bed with two coffees, Susan has the covers kicked off and is lying there with her tongue lolling. I heated the morning kitchen by turning on all the stove burners.
About 25 years ago, I blew in new attic cellulose insulation, renting the equipment and crawling through the attic myself masked and gasping. I even lost my favorite Swiss Army Knife in the fluff and had to buy another. Over the years it settled and lost its R-value. While up there I noticed that all our vents were capped with asbestos, and we’ve been reluctant to agitate it and hesitant to pay for costly abatement.
We put on the metal roof – more costly than shingles, but it includes an underlying insulated blanket to not only protect us from the elements, but to better insulate the house. It helped some. Then we put what we would have spent on solar toward fresh insulation and new ducts. Wow. What a great idea it was.
We hired a good company, A-1 Guaranteed in Vallejo, and they sent over a sequential fleet of sub-contractors. First came a guy to inspect and bid. Next came two guys to run various tests of leaking air and carbon monoxide. Next came three guys who vacuumed out all our old cellulose. Next came three different guys to remove the asbestos ($3K), pull out the old duct work, and install new ducts with controlled venting so our bedroom would receive exactly the heat it needed and no more. Then came two guys to blow in new cellulose – not fiberglass! Finally, the testing duo returned and ran new tests. We earned a 2% leak measurement. He said, “Five percent is excellent. Yours is better than that.”
They also moved the air intake to the furnace from underneath the house to a hall vent with a built-in filter. Lastly, they installed our new WiFi-capable Next thermostat.
Here is our new home environment: We can set the thermostat to low rather than off at night. It still hasn’t come on even though we’ve seen outside temperatures in the low 50s. The house stays between 68-74 degrees. The house is quieter. Street noise is gone. The dust is gone. The cold drafts are gone. We’ve seen immediate benefits beyond simply cost. We’re happy.
And the final bonus: One of the guys found my Swiss Army Knife.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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