Found a new house but one minor issue?

Found a gorgeous old home that was completely gutted and remodeled inside and out right around 410 and Bandera road. Even in bad traffic, my Jacob's commute is 20 minutes. I would have .68 of an acre, backing up to a neighbor that has 5 acres and horses and chickens. Even found out that the next door neighbors are board gamers too and there's a very active community. And it even has rebar!

The attic has no insulation. None. Even then, I've been in there during the heat of the day when it was a hundred and stupid outside and the ac was having no issues keeping it below 77. And since it's an older home, the attic isn't someplace you can just walk around in. It's a very cramped, small space to move around in and you'd have to have some real skinny kid if you even wanted to try it. I would need to hire a company to come and blow insulation in. But it's a 2844 square foot house. Can they even blow insulation that far back?

Sure! When I was a young electrician I would run wires to corner floods in those hot skinny attics.

They can blow insulation anywhere you want.

I'm just wondering how much of a PITA it would be.

I doesn't cost much to get it blown in. Most of the old houses with no attic insulation had knob wiring. So take look at the electrical first.

Already did. I had the home inspector out there and he tore the place apart finding every stupid little detail. Apparently they did a really good job gutting the house and remodeling on the old bones. There's just a couple quibbles here and there and this is one of them.

Blown in insulation isn't as nice as roll batting but something is better than nothing. When we remodeled we had to have some blown into some very tight spaces.
Just do it before you do anything else inside.

I used to do that down there back in the day. Absolutely it can be done.

I wouldn’t 100% trust a home inspector.. hire an electrician for a safety inspection in the attic! Trust me on this! If the home inspector was referred by realtor?? Beware

House is finished out and perfect. No such luck. Here's a pic of the living room / dining room / game room area. Hardwood floors and ceramic tile throughout.

Very nice.

If you were having ME crawl around up there to do a blow-in insulation job, you'd have a serious problem. But you can find a contractor to do the work who'll have some skinny little dude to climb up there and do it.

they did all that work & didn't install insulation?

is the attic fully encapsulated (foam under plywood & rafters?)

Every house has issues. This sounds about as small as they come.

if its an older home make sure the electric panel isn't one of the older Federal Pacific panels. If it is, plan on having an electrician swap it out for a modern panel before moving in. the old FPE panels are bad news, prone to NOT tripping breakers when it should.

Just tagged you on a FB post about this

Have you checked for rebar?

I dread to think what the travel rates would be from Dallas to San Antonio.

That's what I was thinking. But if it's not insulated, another option is to spray closed cell foam on the underside of the roof. That stuff works great and it keeps the attic from ever getting really hot.

They maybe able to recommend someone though.

Check that the roof (especially if metal) is insulated, mine is.

I wish I could figure out how to pull a picture out of a PDF. There's the decking that the asphalt shingles is nailed to, there's plain rafters, there's the new ducting for the AC, and then there's ceiling. Of course, me climbing the ladder to get to the attic ain't happening.

the foam is easy to spot
you would know if you had it
& insulation is mandatory

Easy peasy. I bought the insulation fro Home Depot for our old house with no attic and they loaned me the blower. Put on a mask and did myself. Wait till winter though, to hot during summer.

Duct tape the hose end to a 1x2 or broom handle. Will allow you to reach all the nooks and crannies.

Beautiful place.

Hope you have many years of joy and happiness there.

Kattelyn:

I was a Home Inspector for 14 years before retiring and one piece of advice I have to offer: If the home is within a city limit that requires building permits for remodel make certain a permit for the upgrade/remodeling was drawn. The reason for this, the city can come back to the current homeowner for any current building code requirement that was not performed at the time of the remodel. As an example, at the time of the remodel and electrical upgrade might have been required but was not done because no permit was drawn and thus no city inspection. Can be a pretty expensive proposition.

Thank you. That’s another thing I need to look into.

Seems fishy that they would spend all the money on the remodel and not add insulation. Maybe there is an issue that prevents it or makes it expensive.

None! GO FOR IT. You won't regret it.

After going over it and all the inspector's report, we're backing out. They're not even meeting us halfway. There's soft spots in the roof, no metal flashing around the chimney, the flue is broken, you can see daylight through the back of the chimney wall,

And the real kicker is I can see where there's no insulation in the attic. But they're saying there is and I'm going "What kind? Invisible?" So if I'm catching him in that lie, what else is he lying to me about.

smart decision

Be careful buying remodeled houses down here. That scumbag guy from that house flipping show (Armando something or other) “remodeled” a bunch of houses in the past 10-15 years, and I still don’t know how he got permits for half of it.

Montelongo

His 'do it fast, do it cheap, never mind the rules' attitude is one of the reasons his brother no longer works with him.

Good choice. House purchase is a major investment (or liability).

If areas can't be reached from the attic, you put holes in the corners of the ceiling near those places and blow from below. Then a quick patch job and some crown molding covers it up.