How do you get your house ready for winter?
Start in the attic: check how deep the insulation is and seal the gaps around the hatch, pipes, and wiring. Then check exterior walls and outlets for drafts, weatherstrip doors, change the furnace filter, and have the heating system serviced. If the walls feel cold or the attic is thin, schedule insulation before the first hard freeze.
Early November is a good window for this in Central Kentucky. The leaves are mostly down, the attic is cool enough to poke around in, and the coldest stretch of the year is still ahead. The National Weather Service puts Lexington's normal January low at about 25 degrees, and a house that leaks heat in November will leak a lot more of it then.
The checklist below works for any home, but the order matters. Start at the top of the house, where most of the heat goes, and finish with the equipment.
Why does the order of the checklist matter?
Warm air rises. In winter, it pushes up through every gap in your top floor ceiling and into the attic. As it escapes, colder air gets pulled in low, around doors, the basement and the rim of the floor framing. That loop runs all winter long.
So the biggest openings are usually at the top and bottom of the house, not in the middle. If you only have one free afternoon, spend it in the attic and the basement. The windows and doors you notice most are often a smaller part of the problem than they feel.
The equipment comes last for a reason. A serviced furnace in a leaky house still runs long and hard. Fix the envelope first, and the furnace has less work to do.
What does a fall insulation checklist look like for a Central Kentucky home?
Here is the list, in the order we would work through it. Each item has a one-line reason, so you know what you are looking for and why it matters.
- Look across the attic floor from the hatch. If you can see the tops of the wooden joists, the insulation is level with them or lower, and ENERGY STAR says that is a sign to add more.
- Measure the depth in two or three spots. A tape measure pushed straight down to the ceiling tells you whether you have a few inches or closer to the recommended level for our zone.
- Check the edges, not just the middle. Insulation often thins out near the eaves and around wiring and ductwork, and those thin spots leak heat into the rooms below.
- Inspect the attic hatch or pull-down stairs. A bare plywood panel or a stair door with no weatherstripping is one of the largest single openings in many homes.
- Look for daylight and gaps around pipes, wires and the chimney. Every hole that leads from the living space into the attic is a path for heated air.
- Feel your exterior walls on a cold evening. Lay a hand flat on an outside wall and then on an inside wall, and a clear difference often points to an empty cavity.
- Check outlets and switch plates on outside walls. A cold draft from an outlet cover usually means air is moving freely through the wall.
- Go to the basement and look at the rim joist. The band of wood where the floor framing sits on the foundation leaks in almost every older house.
- Weatherstrip exterior doors and the door to the garage. If you can see light around a closed door, cold air is getting in the same way.
- Change the furnace filter and book a heating tune-up. A clean filter and a checked system make sure the equipment is not working against you.
You do not need to fix everything on this list yourself. The point is to know where your house stands before January does the testing for you.
What should Lexington homeowners pay extra attention to?
Many Lexington neighborhoods filled in during the 1950s through the 1970s, and brick ranches and split-levels from that era often still have their original insulation, or none, behind the walls. They were built when a few inches of attic insulation was normal and walls were often left empty.
For those homes, items 1, 2 and 6 on the list tend to tell the story. A thin attic and cold exterior walls are the most common combination. If both show up, a whole-house approach (attic, walls and air sealing together) usually makes the biggest difference in comfort.
Story-and-a-half homes deserve a closer look at the upstairs. Knee walls and sloped ceilings in those houses are often poorly insulated, which is why the upstairs bedrooms can feel like a different climate from the rest of the house.
Is Georgetown different because so many homes are newer?
Yes, in a useful way. A Georgetown and Scott County housing needs assessment found that about half of the homes in Georgetown have been built since 2000. Those homes were built with insulation in the walls, so the wall check matters less.
What matters more is the attic and the air sealing. Builder-grade attic insulation settles over the years, and it is often uneven over bonus rooms, around recessed lights and near the eaves. Items 3, 4 and 5 on the checklist are the ones to slow down on.
If your Georgetown home has a bonus room over the garage that never feels right, look closely at the attic spaces next to it. Those side attics are a common weak spot in newer subdivisions.
What about older homes in Frankfort?
Frankfort has a mix that is hard to generalize. Census estimates put about half of its homes in the 1950s through the 1970s, and the neighborhoods near downtown and South Frankfort hold houses that are far older than that.
For the postwar homes, the story is similar to Lexington: thin attics and walls that may be empty. For the oldest brick homes near the river, the wall check needs a professional eye. Some of those walls have a framed cavity behind the brick that can be filled. Others are solid masonry, with no cavity at all, and the attic and air sealing do most of the work.
Either way, item 8 is worth your time in Frankfort's older homes. Basements and the rim joist above the foundation wall are often wide open to outside air.
How much attic insulation should you be aiming for?
All of Kentucky is in climate zone 4. For this zone, ENERGY STAR recommends R-60 for an attic with no insulation and R-49 when adding to an attic that already has 3 to 4 inches.
R-value measures how well a material slows heat. The number of inches it takes to reach R-49 depends on the material, so the right depth for your attic should be written on any estimate you get. A rule of thumb you heard years ago may not match the product going into your home.
If your measurement in item 2 came up well short, you are not alone. A big gap is common in homes whose attics have never been topped up.
Should you seal air leaks before adding insulation?
Yes. Sealing comes first because the gaps are easy to reach before new insulation covers them. Once the attic floor is buried under fresh material, those holes are much harder to find.
Insulation slows heat moving through it, but air moving through a gap carries heat right past it. That is why sealing and insulating work best as a pair. ENERGY STAR estimates that air sealing and adding insulation in attics, floors over crawl spaces and basement rim joists saves homeowners an average of 15 percent on heating and cooling costs. Your results depend on your house, but the principle holds.
When should you call a professional instead of doing it yourself?
Some items on the checklist are good weekend jobs. Weatherstripping a door, changing a filter and measuring attic depth are all safe and simple.
Other items are better left to someone with the right equipment. Blowing in attic insulation evenly, sealing around a chimney or flue with the right materials, and filling existing walls all call for a crew. Wall insulation in a finished home uses injection foam, which goes in from the outside through small holes that are patched afterward, so your interior walls are left alone.
If you are not comfortable moving around in your attic, do not push it. Look from the hatch, take a few photos and let an inspector do the rest.
What is a good way to finish your fall checklist?
Write down what you found. A short list of attic depth, any cold walls and any drafts you felt is all an inspector needs to get started, and it helps you follow along as the inspection happens.
Then decide what can wait and what cannot. A thin attic and open air leaks are worth dealing with before the coldest weeks arrive. Walls can be insulated in cold weather too, so there is no need to wait for spring if that is where your house is losing the most.
Get your home checked before the first hard freeze
If your checklist turned up a thin attic, cold walls or drafty outlets, we can tell you exactly what is going on. Request a free inspection from USA Insulation Central Kentucky, and we will measure your attic, check your walls and give you a written estimate for your Lexington, Georgetown or Frankfort home.
