Is Missing Insulation Important To You?

Insulation is an important part of the home in my opinion. As an inspector I seek out missing and incorrectly installed insulation which could be in a home of any age.

The above snip from an inspection report shows 2 wall areas of a brand new home that had missing insulation. The yellow box in the digital pictures at left indicate the area scanned, the thermal images on the right have hot spots where insulation was found to be missing. The builder opened the walls and corrected the issue before closing.

This snip has some attic shots from another new home where there may have been some design flaws and/or oversights. The uninsulated attic above the garage was open to the spray foamed attic space. The spray foamed attic area was only separated from the interior of the home by drywall. This inspection took place during January, just imagine if this had not been corrected and the summer months rolled around!

These are just two new home examples from quality home builders. As one might expect an older homes can have any number of issues. Loose fill insulation gets moved around in attics, after repairs insulation may not be properly reset, walls open to the attic on one side may have insulation fall away from the walls, etc.

Regardless the age of the house you should always get an inspection done with thermal imaging. This is just one of the many applications that I use.