An under-insulated or badly ventilated attic is a gap in your building envelope, the ceiling plane and air barrier between living space and the outside. It is why ice dams form at your eaves, why a roof deck rots from underneath before anyone notices, and why your furnace runs harder than it should. We assess, air-seal, insulate and balance the ventilation as one job, using the same in-house Red Seal crews that build the roof above it.
The attic floor is the ceiling plane of your building envelope, the boundary between conditioned living space and the unconditioned attic above it. Heat that escapes across that boundary does not just cost you on the furnace bill. It warms the underside of the roof deck unevenly, which is exactly what starts an ice dam, and it keeps the deck damp for longer through the shoulder seasons, which is exactly what starts rot in the wood the shingles are nailed to. By the time either shows up as a visible problem, the insulation and ventilation that would have prevented it have usually been wrong for years.
Heat escaping through the attic melts snow on the upper roof. The meltwater runs down and refreezes over the cold, unheated eave, building a dam that backs water up under the shingles.
A deck that stays warm and damp through the winter, or that takes on water from an ice dam, rots from the inside out. It is often well advanced before it shows on the shingles above it.
Every degree that escapes through the ceiling into the attic is a degree the furnace has to replace. An attic that leaks heat all winter is a bill that arrives every month, not a one-time cost.
Most of the signs are visible without ever climbing into the attic. Walk the outside of your house after a snowfall and look up at the roofline, then check the attic hatch itself. If several of these describe your home, it is worth a proper look.
Book an Assessment
Red Seal Certified
Interprovincial Standard
Plenty of insulation contractors have never set foot on a roof, and plenty of roofers never look up into the attic. Because our in-house Red Seal crews build and repair the roof itself, we read your attic as part of that same envelope, roof, insulation, ventilation and shingles working together, rather than as a separate job with its own separate assumptions. It is one reason attic work sits alongside the rest of our exterior and envelope work, not off on its own. Backed by COR safety certification and $10M liability coverage.
A quick top-up, a full re-insulation, or a ventilation correction on its own. Every step carried out in-house by our certified team.
Before anything is added we get into the attic, measure what is actually up there against what current code calls for, and check for the things a depth measurement alone misses: insulation that has settled or been compressed, gaps around the hatch and partition walls, and baffles that are missing or blocked at the eave.
Warm, moist house air rises into the attic through every penetration it can find: light fixtures, the attic hatch, plumbing stacks, wiring holes. Insulation slows heat loss; it does not stop that air. We seal the bypasses first, because piling insulation on top of an unsealed attic floor buries the leak instead of fixing it.
Where the existing insulation is dry and simply thin, we add material to bring the attic up to current code depth. Where it is missing, badly compressed or contaminated, we install fresh insulation across the whole attic floor rather than layering on top of a problem.
Insulation and ventilation are one system, not two separate jobs. We check that intake at the soffit and exhaust at the ridge or roof are both clear and sized to work together, and correct baffles or vents that are blocked, painted shut or simply missing.
Current Alberta building code guidance for an attic sits meaningfully higher than what most existing homes were actually built or last topped up to, generally in the R-50 range for new construction, well above the R-20 to R-31 that was standard practice a few decades ago. Exactly what applies to your home depends on when it was built, which code cycle governs, and what has already been added over the years, which is why a code number on its own is never the full answer. Depth is also only part of the story: a deep layer of compressed, gapped or unevenly spread insulation can measure well with a tape and still perform poorly.
New construction in Alberta is generally built to a meaningfully higher attic R-value than older homes ever were, reflecting decades of tightened energy code.
A house last insulated to the standard of its build decade is commonly well under today’s target, sometimes by a wide margin, without ever having failed or been damaged.
Compression, gaps at the hatch and partitions, and blocked soffit baffles all reduce real performance below what a simple depth measurement suggests.
We measure and tell you where your attic actually sits against current guidance, in plain terms, rather than quoting a code number and leaving you to interpret it.
Insulation and ventilation are one system. Insulation slows heat from reaching the attic; ventilation carries away the moisture and residual heat that gets there anyway. Add insulation without correcting the intake and exhaust it depends on, and you can trap warm, moist air against a cold roof deck, which condenses, sits there, and does more damage than the thin insulation it replaced. This is the single most common mistake we find behind a previous insulation job: material was added, the vents were never checked, and the attic actually got worse.
Cool outside air needs a clear path in at the eave. Insulation piled against the soffit, or baffles that are missing or crushed, blocks that intake before the system can work at all.
Warm, moist air needs somewhere to go once it reaches the attic. A ridge vent, roof vents or a gable vent sized to the intake lets it escape instead of condensing on the underside of the deck.
Trapped moisture condenses on the roof deck and framing, feeds ice damming at the eave, and can support mould, all while the insulation added to help gets blamed for a ventilation problem.
Most attics fall into one of three states, and the right response is different for each. Here is what separates them and how we approach the decision honestly.
Straightforward
The insulation itself is in good shape, just thinner than current code calls for, usually because it was installed to an older standard decades ago and never brought forward. No moisture, no compression, no missing sections. This is the simplest case: add material to bring the attic up to today’s depth and stop there.
Assess first
Insulation that has been walked on, used as storage flooring, or has simply settled and shifted over the years, leaving thin patches and gaps between the material and the framing. Dry compressed insulation can sometimes be topped up over the sound areas; scattered gaps and bare framing usually mean a more even re-do pays off.
Replace, don’t top up
Insulation that has been wet, whether from a roof leak, from ice damming backing water up under the shingles, or from a bathroom fan venting into the attic instead of outside, loses most of its performance and can carry mould. Topping up wet or contaminated insulation just buries the problem. It needs to come out, the cause needs correcting, and the attic gets re-insulated from a clean floor.
We assess before we quote either direction. A top-up costs less and a full removal costs more, and we would rather tell you honestly which one your attic actually needs than default to the bigger job.
Attic work goes well when the assessment comes before the material. Here is exactly what to expect.
We get up into the attic, measure existing insulation depth and condition against current code, and check the intake and exhaust vents while we are there.
Every penetration where warm house air can reach the attic gets identified: the hatch, stacks, wiring holes and top plates.
Bypasses are sealed before any new insulation goes in, so the work underneath is not buried by the layer on top.
Insulation is topped up or installed fresh across the whole attic floor, and intake and exhaust are corrected so the two work as one system.
We walk you through what was found, what was done, and what to watch for, in plain language rather than a stack of jargon.
Watch for ice or a heavy ridge of ice building up at the eaves in winter, rooms below the attic that feel colder or draftier than the rest of the house, a heating bill that keeps climbing, snow melting unevenly off the roof, or insulation that looks thin, patchy or compressed when you look into the attic hatch. A home built or last insulated more than 20 to 25 years ago is also worth checking even without obvious symptoms, since older homes were commonly insulated to a lower standard than current code calls for.
Insulation reduces the heat escaping into the attic that causes ice damming, but insulation on its own is not the whole fix. Ice dams form from a combination of heat loss, air leaks that carry warm air past the insulation, and ventilation that is not balanced between intake and exhaust. We address all three together rather than adding insulation and calling the ice dam solved, because insulation alone often leaves the underlying cause only partly corrected.
Insulation slows heat from moving through the attic floor. Air sealing closes the actual gaps, around the hatch, plumbing stacks, wiring holes and top plates, where warm house air escapes directly into the attic. Insulation alone does not stop that airflow, which is why we seal the bypasses before any new insulation goes in. Piling insulation on top of an unsealed attic floor buries the leak instead of fixing it.
Current Alberta building code guidance for new construction sits meaningfully higher than what most existing homes were built or last insulated to, generally in the R-50 range compared with the R-20 to R-31 that was standard practice a few decades ago. Where your specific attic falls depends on when the home was built and what has already been added since, so we measure and tell you where you actually stand against current guidance rather than quoting a code number and leaving you to interpret it.
The main factors are the size of the attic, how accessible it is, the condition of what is already up there (a straightforward top-up costs less than a full removal and re-insulation), how much air sealing the bypasses need before new insulation goes in, and whether the intake and exhaust ventilation also need correcting. Because those factors vary so much house to house, we assess the attic in person and give you a written quote after that assessment rather than a number guessed sight unseen.
Sometimes. If the existing insulation is dry, in good shape and simply thinner than current code calls for, topping it up is usually the right call. If it is wet, mouldy, badly compressed or has settled into gaps and bare patches, topping up just buries the problem instead of fixing it, and it needs to come out so the attic can be re-insulated from a clean floor. We assess which situation your attic is actually in before recommending either approach.
Insulation and ventilation work as one system. Insulation slows heat from reaching the attic, and ventilation carries away the moisture and residual heat that gets there anyway, through intake at the soffit and exhaust at the ridge or roof. Add insulation without checking that intake and exhaust are clear and balanced, and warm, moist air can get trapped against a cold roof deck, where it condenses and does more damage than the thinner insulation it replaced. Checking the vents is part of the same job, not a separate one.
Not on its own. A musty smell or visible mould usually means moisture has been reaching the attic, from a roof leak, ice damming backing water up under the shingles, or a bathroom fan venting into the attic instead of outside. Insulating over that moisture source does not resolve it. We identify and correct the actual cause first, then re-insulate from a clean, dry attic floor.
Tell us about your attic or the ice you’re seeing at the eaves. You’ll get a clear written quote.
Serving: Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Chestermere. Flexible financing available.