Air sealing services in Los Banos CA - fewer drafts and appliances that still vent right

Most people call because a room won't stay comfortable, and they figure the attic needs more insulation. Sometimes it does, but insulation slows heat and doesn't stop air, so if the gaps stay open, new attic insulation ends up fighting a draft. The price turns on how many openings there are, how easy the attic is to move around in, whether old insulation has to be pulled back or hauled out, and whether testing or new insulation is part of the job. The schedule mostly turns on what I find first, because a roof leak or bad wiring gets fixed before we seal anything, and your written estimate shows what each part costs.

Before we start, I ask what burns fuel in your house, like the furnace, the water heater, a gas range or a fireplace, because making a house tighter changes how those appliances get their air. Then I go up the ladder and look the attic over for anything that has to be fixed first, since sealing over a problem just hides it. Our crew pulls back the old insulation where we need to get at the gaps, seals around can lights, pipes, wires, the hatch and the tops of the walls, and puts everything back the way we found it. Some vents are meant to stay open, like the vents at the eaves and any duct that feeds air to a gas appliance, and we leave those alone.

Sealing often goes with other work. If your ductwork runs through the attic, closed-cell foam insulation, a dense foam that blocks moisture, can do the sealing and the insulating at once. If your house has a basement, we seal the gaps around its pipes and along the tops of its walls the same way before adding basement insulation.

In California, air sealing done under a proper permit will trigger any HERS testing the job needs, which is a check of the work by a certified rater who fills out and registers the paperwork. State guidance says that testing may be required depending on the work, so it isn't settled until we know what your job includes, and any contractor you talk to should be able to explain the permit side to you. If your job needs a permit, we pull it, set up the inspection and tell you before we start. When it isn't clear, we ask the city or county building office first.

We're based in Los Banos and work in the cities around it, and a lot of the houses we see have an attic nobody has been in for years and a room over the garage that never feels right. We see the same kind of houses on jobs in Dos Palos and Gustine, so the first trip up the ladder usually tells me whether sealing alone will help or whether there's more going on.