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I've done it a couple times, overall it sucks but it's not hard to do. Get yourself some white tyvek suits and masks, duct tape up all the seams between your gloves/shoes and the suit and knock it out. Wait until it gets cold and just accept that you're gonna hate life for a couple hours, I added about 7" of blown insulation to our attic which is 36' x 50' and it took me about 4 hours start to finish. Having someone outside feeding the machine is the hardest part, that job sucks too.
Aw, this brings me back. DH and I did this project 20 years ago as poor grad students in our first house. We were insulating walls, not the attic, so perhaps that is less of a mess than blowing into an attic. Either way, it's an easy job.
My wife and I will be tackling a insulating our existing walls. We bought a 63 year old house that has been remodeled a few times. The attic had 4" blown-in insulation on 80% and blank voids on the other 20%. I used a few R30 rolls and used a trowel to redistribute the blown-in cellulose. We recently discovered that our walls aren't insulated and so we'll be buying 20 bags of insulation to get the one day free rental of the machine. I plan on using a hole-saw to cut several 1" holes and hopefully can reuse the cutouts for plugs. We are the first house to get flown over by the local airport and I can't believe the walls aren't insulated for sound or thermal.
It is quite likely the airport came after your house so the noise wasn't an issue. It's also possible there was a wood stove in there originally.
I lived in a house built in 1948 and it had absolutely no insulation in the walls or underneath. The attic space had insulation but it was so old it offered little or no R value. I understand your predicament.
Before you go all out and cut holes and buy insulation, keep in mind you MAY be putting the cart before the horse here. Over time, I opened every wall in that house and found there were cross-braces between many of the joists. Enough that doing what you intend to do would have resulted in some pretty good cold spots. I would suggest an inexpensive scope like Milwaukee offers. It is maybe $100. You may find one for less on eBay or Craig's List. See what you have in the walls before you get too far committed.
If you have not insulated underneath the house, I'd suggest considering doing that first. Cold floors are not good underfoot in the wintertime and it will be easier than patching a bunch of holes in your walls, especially if you're not all that great with drywall repair. I insulated under my old house and it made a major difference. It also gives you a chance to inspect for leaks in your heating system. I found 3, including one duct that was completely off of the register and it was trying to heat underneath the house! Talk about a waste of money. I guess the mice were cozy.
If I recall correctly, the hose that comes on the machine from Home Depot is also much larger than 1" in diameter. I feel like it was 3", maybe 4". As much as I like to consider myself handy, I'd recommend a pro for the job just for the pure aggravation you'll probably encounter with the walls.
And get that attic insulated. That is easy enough with the machine from Home Depot. Do it all. No real need for a Tyvek suit since most of the blown insulation is cellulose. No fiberglass splinters and stingers. The Tyvek suit is nice if you don't want insulation in your butt crack, but it's not a requirement. You will need someone to feed the machine. I'd also recommend some cheap 2-way radios so you can tell them to cut it off if you need a break.
Thanks Spankys, it should be an easy job. I used my stud finder to see if I had any cross or diagonal braces and luckily I didn't come across any. I believe the house originally had plaster walls, but was replaced with drywall (the ceilings have 2 layers of sheetrock). I'm concrete slab on grade, but I'm also in southern California so it's not too bad with the cold.
Greenfiber sells a 1" nozzle reducer and I've read that you just need to restrict the airflow of the blower to 1/4 to get the proper flow. I'll price out hiring a pro, I know Home Depot offers their contractors for the job. I'm not really intimidated about the actual insulation installation…it's the patching that seems tedious…there will be two 1" holes every 16" on every wall both exterior and interior.
Look at the spray foam. It goes on as a liquid and expands quite a bit.
I would consider this if I were hanging new drywall. Since I'm not, blown-in cellulose is the route I'm going. BTW, during the Solar Decathlon, California State University of Sacramento used 3 different types of insulation and measured the temperature at the roof, at the point of insulation, and at the interior dwelling space.
At about 4pm PST on a 80-high degree day, the roof temp was 76.1 degrees for all 3, and the indoor temp was 78.
Blown-netted cellulose: 80 degrees at the core; 79.4 on the .5" gypsum board
Spray foam rigid: 80 degrees at the core; 80.9 on the .5" gypsum board
Fiberglass batten: 79.1 degrees at the core; 79.1 on the .5" gypsum board
The school will analyze the data over 14 day competition, so the study will be used by the industry as well. So for Orange County, blown in cellulose is just fine. It'll be interested to see how the different insulations fare in colder climates.
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