Western New York winters are long, and a thin attic floor makes you pay for every one of them. Most of the older homes we walk into around Jamestown and Falconer have a few inches of old, flattened insulation where there should be well over a foot. The furnace runs harder, upstairs rooms swing between hot and cold, and ice dams build along the eaves.
Our Falconer crew installs blown-in fiberglass in attics and fiberglass batts in open walls across Chautauqua and Cattaraugus County. We bring the insulation up to the depth this climate actually needs, and we do the prep that makes it last.
Heat rises, and in most New York homes it rises straight through an under-insulated attic floor and out through the roof. Fiberglass slows that down. The fine glass fibers trap still air, and a deep, even layer across the attic floor keeps the heat you’ve paid for in the rooms below.
It works in summer too, slowing the heat that builds up in the attic from getting into upstairs bedrooms. And because glass doesn’t burn, absorb water or feed mold, it keeps working for decades if it’s installed right and stays dry.
The signs your attic is short are easy to spot: you can see the tops of the ceiling joists, upstairs rooms run colder than downstairs, snow melts off your roof days before your neighbors’, and icicles and ice dams build along the gutters. Any one of those usually means the attic floor is letting heat straight through.
For open attic floors, blown-in fiberglass is usually the best value. It’s blown in by machine, fills around joists, wiring and boxes without the gaps you get from cut batts, and settles very little.
Before we blow anything, the attic gets checked. Bathroom fans venting into the attic get ducted outside, baffles go in at the eaves so the roof can still breathe, and old insulation that’s wet, moldy or full of rodent droppings gets flagged for insulation removal first. Depth rulers go in before we start, and we use laser levels to keep the depth even across the whole attic.
If the existing insulation is dry and clean, we usually leave it in place and blow new fiberglass over the top, which keeps the cost down. The old layer still counts toward the total R-value, so you’re only paying for the depth you’re missing.
Western New York has long heating seasons and lake-effect snow off Lake Erie. For attics here, the US Department of Energy recommends R-49 to R-60. Blown-in fiberglass runs at roughly R-2.2 to R-2.9 per inch, so you’re looking at about 16 to 22 inches of depth.
Most older homes we look at have 4 to 6 inches of old, compressed insulation, closer to R-11 or R-19. Adding the difference is often the single biggest energy upgrade in the house.
Getting to depth also helps with ice dams. Most ice dams start with heat leaking into the attic and warming the roof deck, which melts snow that then refreezes at the cold eaves. A deep, even layer of insulation, with baffles keeping the eaves ventilated, cuts off that heat at the source.
In open walls, such as additions, renovations, new builds and basements, we fit fiberglass batts sized to the framing: R-13 or R-15 in 2×4 walls and R-19 or R-21 in 2×6. They’re cut tight around outlets, pipes and wiring, because a batt that’s squashed or left short loses a lot of its rated value. For more on batts, see our batt insulation in New York page.
For older homes with closed walls, we dense-pack the cavities instead, usually with cellulose. We remove siding, drill a 2-inch hole into each cavity and blow the material in with air until it’s packed tight. See blow-in insulation in New York.
Basements and crawl spaces are worth a look too. Batts between the floor joists over an unheated crawl space, or against a finished basement wall, stop the cold floors that a lot of older homes put up with every winter.
Most blown-in attic jobs take one to two days. We protect the route through the house, set up the blowing machine outside and run the hose up to the attic, so there’s no material carried through your rooms.
In the attic, the prep comes first: baffles at the eaves and bathroom fans vented outside. Then the fiberglass is blown to the agreed depth, checked against the depth rulers and a laser level so it’s even throughout.
You don’t need to move out or clear the house. The noise is mostly outside at the machine, and once we’ve cleaned up there’s nothing to air out. Wall batt jobs in open framing are scheduled around your contractor or renovation timeline, so the insulation goes in after the electrical and plumbing rough-in and before the drywall.
Our New York crew is based in Falconer and installs fiberglass insulation across Falconer, Jamestown, Ellicottville, Gowanda, Hamburg, Olean, Mayville and Fredonia, plus the rest of Chautauqua and Cattaraugus County. For a home in Pennsylvania, see fiberglass insulation in Pennsylvania. For more on fiberglass as a material, see fiberglass insulation.
We’ll check your attic, measure what’s there now and tell you what it would take to get to the right R-value. You’ll get a written quote with the material, depth and prep spelled out. Call our New York branch to book your free insulation assessment.
