Speaker 1: It's always right every Thursday at this time to have
Speaker 1: our main man on. I mean you can listen to
Speaker 1: At Home with Gary Sullivan on over two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five stations nationally. I mean, can't go anywhere without
Speaker 1: people bothering him, Isn't that right?
Speaker 2: Gary? Oh gosh, you know it.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: You got a busy day today.
Speaker 1: You know, you know you have. I have a very
Speaker 1: busy day to day. I've got to drive to Blacksburg,
Speaker 1: Virginia later today. Such pretty country though there. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever spent any time there. That is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of America.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: Well, my daughter's in Charlotte, so we go that way
Speaker 3: a lot. Yeah, and it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: The only thing you gotta do, you gotta be careful.
Speaker 1: And I was explaining to my wife last night about
Speaker 1: why I'm leaving. When I'm leaving because you know, one
Speaker 1: thing that I don't like to do, especially the older
Speaker 1: I get. I don't like driving through the mountains of
Speaker 1: West Virginia at night.
Speaker 2: Yep. Well, a lot of people don't like to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not alone, all right.
Speaker 1: Listen, there are a lot of people out there, Gary,
Speaker 1: They're gonna their eyes are gonna start rolling in the
Speaker 1: back of their head when we're gonna start talking about insulation.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is you better not ignore it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about adding insulation. Now, let me ask
Speaker 1: you before we go any further, because this is where
Speaker 1: I get to ask dumb questions.
Speaker 4: And I love it. Okay, I love it.
Speaker 1: Is there a big difference between trying to insulate an
Speaker 1: older home compared to a relatively newer home.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's a real big difference.
Speaker 3: I mean, usually when we think, or at least even
Speaker 3: when I think about insulating a home, I think of
Speaker 3: a two story house and you got a little cross
Speaker 3: space up there where you can get into the attic
Speaker 3: and you insulate the floor of the attic and you're done.
Speaker 3: And all houses aren't constructed that way. I mean, we've
Speaker 3: got balloon foundations, we got the old cape CODs, But generally,
Speaker 3: what we're trying to do is create a buffer between
Speaker 3: the air and the attic and the air in your home,
Speaker 3: which you're paying to condition. So they're not all the same,
Speaker 3: but the principle is pretty much the same, that's for sure, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 3: And One of the things been bugging me is, you know,
Speaker 3: it's been bugging everybody the price of.
Speaker 2: Energy.
Speaker 3: This year, I've heard more complaints I've ever ever had
Speaker 3: about the price energy. And the other day when I
Speaker 3: was doing a show, it dawned on me. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: we're all whining about it. I wonder what everybody's doing
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's interesting here. I heard a long
Speaker 1: podcast and I don't listen to many podcasts, but I
Speaker 1: was struck by this one because you know, everybody wants
Speaker 1: to do and I don't care what side of the
Speaker 1: political fenchure on, but clearly during the Biden administration they
Speaker 1: were not for drilling, fossil fuse, et cetera, et cetera. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we fell behind compared to where we were during
Speaker 1: Trump's first term. Now he wants to go back in
Speaker 1: the adage, right, drill, baby, drill, But it takes time
Speaker 1: for them to get that oil and gas true. And
Speaker 1: so that's the reason, as I understand it, why there's
Speaker 1: a chance or that's the reason why we have higher
Speaker 1: energy prices now.
Speaker 4: But let's get back to installation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna let me add one thing too. Tom
Speaker 2: because that's the oil side of things. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that's driving the prices.
Speaker 3: On electricity is the demand for electricity with all this
Speaker 3: AI that it takes these computers so much energy, no kidding,
Speaker 3: and that's driving it up too. Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 3: search that and read it.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating. I will check it out.
Speaker 4: I will check it out for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you're looking at insulation, okay, what type are
Speaker 1: you looking for?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 4: And is this pretty much straight across the board?
Speaker 3: Well, there's different types of insulation, and people will ask
Speaker 3: that question a lot. If it's a you know, standard house,
Speaker 3: there's probably a chance on the attic floor they've got
Speaker 3: blown in fiberglass insulation, or they got fiberglass batting insulation,
Speaker 3: or they got cellulose. Some of the newer homes now
Speaker 3: are starting to use phones. But I tell people all
Speaker 3: the time, first of all, you or somebody has got
Speaker 3: to get up in the attic and see what you got.
Speaker 3: I think some people, and I've encouraged people to do that,
Speaker 3: are shocked. They get up in the attic and with
Speaker 3: their yardstick and they got five inches five inches of insulation.
Speaker 2: On the floor.
Speaker 3: And in our area Tom, we should probably have about
Speaker 3: sixteen to eighteen inches, no kidding, yeah, yeah. So if
Speaker 3: you're using fiberglass for an R value, Department of Energy
Speaker 3: says about an R forty two and one inch of
Speaker 3: fiberglass blown in insulation gives you about an R two
Speaker 3: point five. You know, do the math quickly and you're
Speaker 3: probably around sixteen eighteen inches and they literally find five
Speaker 3: inches of insulation. So I tell people, I don't care
Speaker 3: what you use in that attic, but if you've got
Speaker 3: five inches of insulation, if you're do it yourself, fine,
Speaker 3: do a little research. I really, you know, fiberglass is fine.
Speaker 3: Cellular settles a little bit more than fiberglass, but it's fine.
Speaker 3: Putting batting on top of batting, you can do that.
Speaker 3: You can go perpendicular so that you cover any you know,
Speaker 3: where it butts up against the joist. Don't use two
Speaker 3: vapor barriers. There's probably a vapor barrier down at the
Speaker 3: bottom top.
Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is, if.
Speaker 3: You use batting, don't use it where it's got the
Speaker 3: paper casing over it. Just use the plane batting or
Speaker 3: blow insulation in there. But you know, if you only
Speaker 3: got three inches of insulation or five inches of insulation,
Speaker 3: and you get it up to eighteen inches. The difference
Speaker 3: you're gonna feel and here your house will be quieter,
Speaker 3: it'll certainly be warmer, it won't be as drafty. So
Speaker 3: you know, whatever insulate was something. There's even blue gene insulation,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: Blue Just what the hell is blue jean?
Speaker 2: And so ground up blue jeans? What it's ground up denim?
Speaker 4: You're kidding me.
Speaker 1: No, this is for real, this is for real, ground
Speaker 1: up blue jeans.
Speaker 3: How about that you wondered where all your jeans went?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Well, now I know I have somewhere
Speaker 4: to go donate them.
Speaker 2: There you go, there we go. All right.
Speaker 1: Well, now one of the biggest mistakes we can make,
Speaker 1: because you can make a mistake on this stuff and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden it was wasn't worth all
Speaker 1: the hassle that you went through, Right, Well.
Speaker 2: That's true. In fact, you gotta again.
Speaker 3: It gets into the era that your house was the
Speaker 3: First thing you want to do is you want to
Speaker 3: make sure if you have old electric system. There's something
Speaker 3: called knob and tube wiring, and it's porcelain insulators with wires,
Speaker 3: you can't insulate over that that creates heat. So you know,
Speaker 3: just make sure you don't have any weird looking wiring,
Speaker 3: not like that wiring we're used to looking at. And
Speaker 3: if you do, don't insulat or get somebody in there
Speaker 3: to check that out. The other thing is around the
Speaker 3: whole perimeter.
Speaker 2: Of the attic.
Speaker 3: I think we talked about this a few weeks ago,
Speaker 3: we were talking about softied ventilation. Was it you that
Speaker 3: told me you had the softs but you didn't have
Speaker 3: any ventilation?
Speaker 1: I know what't me, but I hed a bunch.
Speaker 3: But if you're up in the attic in the daytime
Speaker 3: and you look around the perimeter, you may see some
Speaker 3: cardboard shoots that are going up and bringing the air
Speaker 3: from just below the gutters into the attic. It's called convection.
Speaker 3: It's cooler temperatures at the lowest area, forcing the hot
Speaker 3: air out of the ridge vent or those shoe box
Speaker 3: vents on the roof. And a lot of times those
Speaker 3: cardboard shoots aren't there or people aren't paying attention, and
Speaker 3: they're up there blowing insulation on the attic floor and
Speaker 3: they cover those vents up.
Speaker 2: Which is a huge and no, no wow, because it's
Speaker 2: not going to really hurt you.
Speaker 3: Well, it will hurt you in the winter, but not
Speaker 3: as much as it's going to hurt you in the summertime.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, you put insulation on the floor
Speaker 3: to save money, but your attic temperature is now one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty degrees because you don't have any air
Speaker 3: in flow right into that attic.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: So those are the two most you know, most common mistakes.
Speaker 3: Probably covering up the soft inventing around the perimeter for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, and the last thing I asked you this at
Speaker 1: the very start, But I want to circle back for
Speaker 1: a minute, because there are a lot of people around
Speaker 1: here that are living in older homes. We've got a
Speaker 1: lot of beautiful older homes or you know, start off
Speaker 1: homes for a lot of people that have kind of
Speaker 1: been redone, you know, in recent years in certain areas,
Speaker 1: a lot of older homes have no insulation in the walls.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that insulation does it settle over time?
Speaker 2: Or what?
Speaker 3: We didn't put insulation in walls till about nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: You're kidding.
Speaker 2: No, sir.
Speaker 3: When we went into the gas crisis, the old crisis,
Speaker 3: during Carter, they never put insulation in walls. Now, the
Speaker 3: Department of Energy in our area says we should have
Speaker 3: an R nineteen in the walls of our home. Well,
Speaker 3: kind of too late to a degree. I mean the
Speaker 3: wall's already made.
Speaker 1: But well, when you say that too late, you mean
Speaker 1: there's nowhere to get in there. It's a brick home
Speaker 1: and there's just nothing to you. Just can't shoot it
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 3: Right, you can shoot it in there, but it's too
Speaker 3: late to fact to get into an R nineteen because
Speaker 3: remember our little theory with what an our value is
Speaker 3: in terms of you know, so there's a space in there.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's an inch, sometimes it's an inch and a half.
Speaker 3: But there's companies out there that can you know, if
Speaker 3: it's a vinyl siding, clip to vinyl siding off, if
Speaker 3: it's wood, drill through the wood, If it's brick, drill
Speaker 3: into the brick, and they can hit the pockets of
Speaker 3: the house and under pressure, pump a foam in there.
Speaker 3: And it's a closed cell phone, so it has a
Speaker 3: water vapor barrier in there, and they pump it in there,
Speaker 3: and on the foam per inch of thickness, it's about
Speaker 3: an R seven.
Speaker 4: So well, I mean, it's better nothing, right, better than nothing.
Speaker 3: You know what the real big benefit is there. Since
Speaker 3: it's under pressure, it seals all the gaps. It totally
Speaker 3: eliminates drafts, and that's what's making young.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where you're spending your money, Yes, sir, Okay, Arry,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're the man, Tracey. I mean you know,
Speaker 1: I mean you really are. I mean, you get you
Speaker 1: get two hundred and seventy five stations. You're the kind
Speaker 1: of guy that the rest of us dream of the
Speaker 1: coming two one hundred and seventy five stations.
Speaker 3: And your boss is coming in the day, so you'd
Speaker 3: be good. Okay, who is and your wife coming in?
Speaker 1: She's already here there you go. Yeah, I mean she's
Speaker 1: sitting here and she's you know, on her phone and
Speaker 1: you know, paying attention to you, right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: she's bored with this radio show already. Gary, whenever bored
Speaker 1: with your show though, Little Era Saturdays and Sundays on
Speaker 1: fifty five KRC nine to noon.
Speaker 2: Gary.
Speaker 4: Always great being with you, buddy. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Thanks. Take care