HVAC and Insulation From a Working Tech
Dana Sorensen · July 5, 2026
What a manufacturer spec sheet or code minimum never spells out is the real dollar cost of falling short. Last winter, in a home outside northern Utah, I found that out firsthand while working with a homeowner paying $380 a month just to heat his house. His attic clearly had insulation in it — visible, … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 4, 2026
Insulation gets credit for saving houses money that it never actually saved. Piling batts into an attic does almost nothing if the ceiling underneath is riddled with gaps — and last fall, in a suburban Salt Lake City attic, I found exactly that. Gorgeous, fluffy R-38 fiberglass covered every inch of the floor. The homeowner … Read more
Dana Sorensen · July 3, 2026
A four percent gap in coverage is enough to wipe out half your insulation’s rated performance — and that’s almost the exact math I was staring at last fall when a homeowner called me in a near-panic. She’d just paid a contractor good money to insulate her attic with batts, and somehow her heating bill … Read more
Dana Sorensen · June 23, 2026
Guess wrong on vapor barrier insulation when to use it, and the mistake won’t show up for months — sometimes years — by which point you’re looking at a repair bill several times larger than the material would have cost. That’s the stake sitting underneath what sounds like a simple question. If you’re already unsure … Read more
Dana Sorensen · June 22, 2026
Last spring, I was crouched at the edge of a homeowner’s attic hatch, flashlight in hand, while she read me three insulation quotes off her phone. Her 1,400-square-foot attic had racked up bids of $1,800 for blown fiberglass, and $7,500 and $9,200 for closed-cell spray foam from two other outfits. Every one of those three … Read more
Dana Sorensen · June 22, 2026
My thermal camera flags a nine-degree cold streak crawling straight up the foam board lining a freshly-framed basement wall in northern Utah — and that’s the reading that told me the homeowner standing next to me had grabbed exactly the wrong sheet off the rack. Twelve panels of silver, foil-faced polyiso were already screwed to … Read more
Dana Sorensen · June 21, 2026
Why does a spray foam job that looks perfect on installation day turn into a moisture nightmare a few months later? Nine times out of ten, it’s not sloppy work — it’s the wrong foam for the wrong climate. I think about this every time I picture a homeowner I worked with in central Utah, … Read more