Attic Insulation in Hillsborough, NC

Hillsborough Homes and Their Attics

Old Frame Houses That Grew in Stages

The 1973 National Register nomination for the Hillsborough Historic District found two early house types that builders repeated for decades. The more common one was a tall, narrow two-story frame house with its chimneys outside the gable ends. The other was a story-and-a-half house whose gable roof was cut by narrow dormers. The nomination adds that houses here were enlarged and changed almost without pause, and the 2014 update says most later additions went on at the back. A Hillsborough house built up in stages may have several attics under separate roofs. Each of those spaces is reached and measured on its own, and the new insulation is laid level across each one, with no thin patches.

Knee Walls Under Dormers and Bungalow Roofs

The story-and-a-half form did not stop with the early houses. The district's 2014 inventory describes side-gabled Craftsman bungalows a story and a half tall, dated from about 1911 to 1930, many with dormers. In these houses the bedrooms upstairs fill part of the roof itself. Behind their short knee walls run narrow side attics, three-cornered in section. A training manual from Iowa's state health department describes that wedge-shaped space as a frequent source of leaks. ENERGY STAR puts the area behind and beneath knee walls on its list of air leaks. Those side attics are part of the job here, sealed and then insulated, along with the main space over the top ceiling.

Eno and Bellevue Mill Houses

The Eno Cotton Mill opened in 1896 and housed its workers in company villages on both sides of the Eno River. Its nomination says the houses had two to six rooms, were rented by the room and were heated with coal stoves. In 1956 the company sold its village houses to employees on the condition that they be moved, and most were moved into West Hillsborough or out into the county. The Bellevue mill's village north of its plant, probably built in the early 1920s, was sold in 1957 with the houses left where they stood. Where an old stove chimney still comes up through a ceiling, the ring of open space at the brick is covered with aluminum flashing cut to fit, then sealed with high-heat caulk. A sheet-metal shield then keeps loose insulation clear of the masonry.