REMOVING ATTIC INSULATION
How Much Time Does it Take, and How Much Does it Cost?
Easily over 1/3rd of our clients choose to employ us to remove the attic insulation from their homes. I’ve discussed the popular reasons homeowners have for removing attic insulation, you can read about it here: How To Know When Your Attic Insulation Needs Replacing
The most common questions we receive are, “How much does it cost, and how long does it take, to remove attic insulation?”.
As you can imagine, these questions are highly subjective!
Removing Attic Insulation can be Confusing!
Time and Cost vary from region to region, company to company, and attic to attic.
I’m constantly searching the internet for articles and videos relating to my career, and I know exactly how frustrated you are as a homeowner when attempting to get accurate costs related to removing your attic insulation.
Why Hide The Price?
Don’t you just HATE IT when you ask for the price or cost on a Facebook Post or You Tube video, only to receive the reply, “Call us for a free estimate”. Or just as bad, “Private Message Me”.
Question One: How Much Does it Cost to Remove Attic Insulation?
Our attic removal rates start at $1.50 per ft2, and climb to $1.75 per ft2.
The variation in cost is due to several factors:
- The type of insulation being removed.
- How difficult the attic is to move around in.
- How much debris is mixed in with the old insulation, (roofing trash, etc).
- If the attic insulation is a mix of different types of material, (fiberglass blankets under a bed of loose-fill insulation, etc).
Basically, if removing your attic insulation is going to put more wear-and-tear on our equipment, we’re going to charge you closer to the $1.75 figure. Roofers trash, nails, wood splinters, pieces of shingles, as well as debris and old parts from your HVAC have to be hand-cleaned from your attic insulation before we can remove your insulation with our vacuums.
Rockwool insulation is very abrasive, and has the same detrimental effect on our vacuum blades and vacuum chambers as does sand blasting! If your attic contains rockwool and roofers debris, we’ll charge up to $1.75 per ft2 due to the damage done to our equipment. Rockwool literally creates holes in our blades and chambers, sometimes the size of a nickel!
Choosy Contractors
Would you rather hear: “We don’t remove that type of insulation”? Homeowners don’t want to hear what I won’t do. You want a solution for your problem!
I have a friend who owns an insulation company similar to ours. He will not vacuum rockwool insulation out of an attic. So if you call his company and set an appointment – and have rockwool in your attic – you’ve wasted your time.
Big Attics = Discounts!
When an attic is larger than 2000 ft2, we give a small break in the rate. The discount is entirely discretionary. (I calculate it while I’m in your attic performing my attic evaluation).
Removing Attic Insulation can be a Dangerous Job
When I discover fiberglass blankets in an attic with loose-fill insulation, the cost will be closer to the $1.75 per ft2. Why? We have to hand-bag those fiberglass blankets in the attic, tie the bags shut, and walk them out of your attic and house, and into our trash rig. Once the attic is clean of the fiberglass blankets, we can vacuum the loose-fill insulation.
So, literally we are taking twice as long with our labor, because we have two types of attic insulation to remove.
Working twice as long in an Atlanta attic, during our hot & muggy summer months is physically and mentally tortuous while wearing full PPE! In fact, it’s dangerous.
So, for the sake of our crew and their safety/health I will add an extra man on that team, just to get them out of your attic by mid-day. The added labor simply costs more.
Three Vacuums = Locomotive Power!
So far as I am aware, Bird Family Insulation is the only company who removes attic insulation using three vacuums daisy-chained on one large hose.
Imagine a long train, heavy with cargo, being pulled by one single locomotive. It’s not very efficient, and takes longer to get from point A to point B. But imagine that lengthy, heavy train with 3 locomotives attached to it. It gets the cargo moved in a timely fashion, without undue wear-and-tear on any one of the locomotives.
This is the design my son, Beau Bird has created with our vacuum system.
He attaches three vacuums, each one at 23 horse power – to one single 6” vacuum hose. That 6” hose is about 100 ft long, and reduces to 4” in the attic.
His system will vacuum the heaviest insulation: cellulose, rockwool, wet fiberglass, etc in an amazingly short amount of time. In fact, the only limitation on how fast we remove your attic insulation is the design of your attic and how fast the hose guy moves!
Four Hours to Remove Your Attic Insulation
My estimate for an average time needed to remove attic insulation, using our system, is about 4 hours. We’ve had attics that took two days to clean out! But in general, once we get started, four hours will be enough time for our crew to remove attic insulation in the average home.
Thanks for reading! I hope this has helped you better understand removing attic insulation.
Bob Bird
Bird Family Insulation
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