The Ultimate Attic Solution with Larson Home Services

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight O seven thirteen ten do wuib a and ask
the experts. Joined this morning by Andrew Larson of Larsen
Home Services. The website at larsenhome Services dot com. That's
l A rso N Home Services dot com. Telp number
six SO eight five three five forty three forty three.
That's six SO eight five three five forty three forty three.

(00:20):
Great day to give them a call that Larst Home Services.
Look at the forecast here, Andrew, and we've got a
really nice day to day. I high at fifty five.
Then I look, uh, look the Saturday. I see the flurries. Word,
this is Wisconsin. Any day we could suddenly go from
flurries to significant snowfall to suddenly being a really nice
toasty day to back to snow. And you get this

(00:42):
freezing and thawing and all these other issues that can
be going on on the roof of your house, and
that can create some issues for sure. First off, welcome
to the program, uh, and good to talk to this morning, Andrew.
And as we talk about that freezing and thawing, there
are ways to help deal with some of those issues
when it comes to your addict. Aren't attic insulation aren't there.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yep, I know, you know a few things. I just
want to start off by saying that even though it
is getting colder, the weather is still pretty darn nice.
It's really dry, which has allowed us to get a lot,
really really caught up on work. Nice. If you're still
worried about your roof, and you know, if you're thinking
I don't know what it condition it's in, you know,
you're thinking maybe need an inspection, we still have plenty

(01:26):
of openings available for that, and even getting gutters put
on with gutter shutter, you know, there's still a lot
of leaves to fall, a lot and which you know,
after this weekend probably going to be falling a lot
quicker if we get a deep freeze, but a lot
more leaves to fall. If you're still looking to possibly
get that done, or just find out how much it
would cost, give us a call. But yes, I do

(01:46):
know a lot about insulation. And I was talking to
somebody the other day and for some well I mean,
for some odd reason, they asked me about the insulation
in their house. They must have thought I actually knew something,
and I said, you know, all right, I tried to
break it down in Layman's terms. Most people don't think
about is that insulation is for the most part in

(02:09):
your attic is more important in the summer, which to
a lot of people doesn't make any sense. Well, you
know heat, heat seeks cool right high pressure to low pressure.
So in the summer, the heat from the attic seeks
to come inside the house, and basically through radiant energy transfer,
it turns your ceiling into an oven. And with people

(02:32):
who are under insulated, I mean, I've been annaulynsis that
basically had no insulation. Our reps will put their laser
thermometer or their yeah, their laser on the ceiling, and
your ceiling's ninety five degrees and we're trying to cool
a room to seventy degrees. Makes it really really tough. Now,
a nice beautiful fluffy coating of seventeen inches or R

(02:56):
sixty of cellulose insulation, that's going to stop that. That's
to make that not happen, because that is now blocking
that heat transfer. In the winter, though the inside of
our house is heating up. And this is how I
describe it so people can really visualize it. Let's say
that your furnace as it blows air. It's just not
blowing through a vent. It's blowing into a balloon, and

(03:18):
that balloon gets filled up with hot air and it
gets tied off, but the balloon's actually full of dollars.
As those hot what was warm balloons rise up, they
will find any nook and cranny and crack and outlet
and anything you'd name it in that ceiling or in
your wall to go up and out the top of

(03:40):
the house. Through something called stack effect. Warm air rises
bottom line, it's really easy, and then your attic will
then fill up with those balloons full of warm air
that you paid for. That's why they're full of dollars,
and they will escape out into the cold winter air.
But as that happens, as all the air leaves, we
have to bring new air in. Or I mean, essentially,

(04:01):
if we're in a vacuum, the walls would collapse, right,
but our houses aren't that tight, so it sucks in
more air most of the time from the leakiest part
of our house, which is in the basement. The rim
joices the part along the wall above the concrete where
when you look up you see ninety nine percent of
the time, some fiberglass insulation stuffed in there, which is

(04:24):
basically working as a nice air filter for you, but
it doesn't stop the air. So those balloons full of
warm air and the money you paid to heat it
goes out into the attic and then outside. More cold
air is sucked inside through the basement, most of the
time through the basement, and then we start this vicious
cycle of then reheating it all over again. It's kind

(04:48):
of the same in the summer. If we're under insulated
in the attic, that ceiling is gonna heat that air up,
and that's gonna go through the air returns. It's gonna
and it's gonna have to keep getting cooled, more cool
air and more cool air and more cool air. Same
in the winter. Now, can we stop that? No, that's
not our goal. Our goal is to drastically slow that

(05:10):
process down. We want to slow the process of heating
up the air conditioning air that you paid for in
the summer and slow down the loss of the warm
air you paid the heat in the winter and over
between me and my business partner Josh, over the past
twenty years of experience doing insulation, we have come up

(05:31):
with the ultimate addic solution, and it is exactly what
it sounds like. It is the ultimate solution to have
your attic done and done properly, because what we know
is that we lose anywhere from sixty to eighty percent
of all of our energy straight through our attic or
is heated up from the warm air in our attic.
So that's the part that we want to attack. First.

(05:53):
There's companies on TV. And I'm not sitting here, I'm
not trying to talk bad about anybody, but I want
people to understand something companies. I see the commercials on
TV a lot right now of companies that want to
stick a tube into your wall and then fill the
wall compartment up with foam. Honestly, it is an awesome idea.

(06:13):
It's awesome, but it's just an idea, yeah, because I'll
tell you what if you're going to blind. First of all,
we don't lose that much energy through the walls. We
lose a lot more through the windows. So if you're
really concerned about that energy loss or gain through the
windows or through the walls, you should really worry about

(06:34):
your windows. Now, if your windows are double pain low
e coding, it's not going to get a whole heck
of a lot better than that. When we fill our
walls with foam. And here's the problem. Ninety nine percent
of those walls that we're filling with foam already have
insulation in them. So what it ends up doing is
it ends up bunching up the insulation. It ends up
creating voids where there's no insulation. Because if we think

(06:55):
about putting an expanding foam in a wall, the only
way to really know that that is completely filled, because
if it's not complete, it's no good, is to almost
blow out the drywall on the inside of the house.
And I'm just saying from experience, we've had to go
in and fix some of these jobs, and what we
found is when we tore the wall open that there

(07:16):
was literally like a six inch strip of foam insulation
down the middle of the wall, nothing on the sides,
and it had actually pushed the fiberglass down to the bottom.
So I'm not saying wall insulation isn't important, but most
people already have it. We really need to concentrate on
the attic and the ultimate attic solution takes care of
all that. It takes care of a perfect air seal

(07:36):
job so that those warm balloons of warm air and
money aren't going into the attic and outside in the
winter where we're slowing or drastically. I mean, any ice
dams that are being caused from heat loss in the
house are basically going to be stopped. Now. You can
still get some ice dams from mother nature. You get
really warm days where you get some sun and you

(07:57):
get you know, you can get sun in twenty five
degrees and it's going to melt snow on your roof,
it gets it cools down at night. You can get
some ice damming. But the real bad eye dams are
caused by heat loss in the house, and that's what
we stop. So our aim is to make your attic perfect.
I understand it's something that you probably never see. We

(08:17):
call it peace of mind, but it is to make
your home more comfortable, more livable, so that we're not
having When I was talking to this person the other day,
I said, you know, doing your attic properly and doing
your rim joices properly so we're not sucking air in
actually makes it make your floors a lot warmer. And
then I stopped and I thought, you know, I have
a new house, and I know that my house was

(08:38):
done right. We didn't actually do the insulation. The company
that it did a wonderful job because they do new construction.
It's kind of the same, but it's different and they're
trained in new construction. So I hired that out and
they did a phenomenal job. And my floors are so
warm in my house. But the house I lived in
before this, the floors were ice cold, I mean for

(09:02):
freezing cold. And I just just me talking about that
with that person like popped into my head. I was like,
you know, my force are so nice and warm. So
this is what the ultimate addic solution aims to do.
We take care of the attic the best way we
can with the best air ceiling possible with an R
sixty seventeen to eighteen inches of cellulose insulation, while taking

(09:25):
care of the critical details up there, I e. Can Lights, chimneys,
I mean, you name it. It all has to be air sealed,
and taking care of your basement rims as well. You're
going to have a perfectly sealed up house where you're
going to live more comfortably. And a byproduct of that
is your energy bills will be less because we will
be heating less and we will be cooling less.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
It's not just a decent as addic solution, it is
an ultimate and there's a reason for that. As Andrew
talks about the ultimate addic solution with Larstom Services and
really what they're able to do, it is above and beyond.
You talk about really getting down and and taking care
of every little issue that could potentially cause heat loss.
And you also think about the cost to run you
As you're mentioning Andrew cost to run your furnace and

(10:08):
heat that space, you also think about if you can
take some of that burden off that furnace and off
those and then in the summer you're a central air system,
reducing their alliance in those things you can prolong and
of course delay any type of issues with those save
you money in a number of ways. It's really important too,
is we started the conversation off looking at this weather.
It is a fantastic time to get the folks from

(10:29):
Larsenal Services out your house, take a look, see how
it's performing when it comes to energy. If it's something
that they could help you with, they can definitely give
you give you the rundown. The great thing too is
when you have them stop out. It'll be free, it's
going to be no pressure. They'll explain to you what's
going on with your house. They'll tell you what they
can do for you, and of course they will be
there for you when you need them. I worked with

(10:49):
Andrew and the team in Larstom Services a couple of
years ago. I've been working with them ever since. Just
amazing work that they do at Larstoom Services to This
morning is the morning to give them a call. Six
so eight five three five forty three forty three. That's
five three five forty three forty three online Larsenhomeservices dot com.
That's l A R. S o N Home Services dot com. Andrew,
I always learn so much. Thank you so much for

(11:10):
taking the time this morning. We'll talk real soon, all right.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Sounds good to have a good one.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Kevin Hamham's Barbercare comes your way next right here on
thirteen ten wuib a