Attic Insulation in Roanoke Rapids, NC

Roanoke Rapids Homes and Their Attics

Two-Story Houses in the Mill Villages

The historic district's nomination describes four mill villages: Rosemary, Patterson and the two Roanoke mills. Where most mill towns in the state housed workers in one-story houses, the mills here built mainly two-story houses and duplexes, with gable-front or hipped roofs. In a two-story house the attic sits over the bedrooms, and warm air from both floors pushes up through any gap in that top ceiling. ENERGY STAR advises closing the holes around wiring, plumbing, chimneys and the attic hatch before adding insulation.

Bungalows and Cottages With Rooms Under the Roof

Outside the mill villages, the nomination names the one-story gable-front bungalow as the most common house form in the city. Larger bungalows were often gable-roofed, and some rose to a story and a half, with a front dormer, to fit bedrooms upstairs. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Colonial Revival cottages of a story and a half, with dormers, were popular along Hamilton and Washington Streets. When rooms sit partly inside the roof, short knee walls close off narrow side attics. ENERGY STAR lists knee walls, the cavity behind them and the floor beneath, as a common leak point. We seal and insulate those wedge-shaped spaces too, not just the main attic.

Postwar Neighborhoods East and West of the District

The nomination notes that neighborhoods built after World War II border the historic district on its east and west sides. By the Census figures on this page, roughly half the city's homes were built before 1970. If yours is a ranch house from those years, its shallow roof pitch leaves almost no headroom over the outer walls. ENERGY STAR says the eaves are where insulation is sometimes thin. The soffit vents at that edge must never be buried, and baffles keep an open channel for outside air to move up past the insulation.