Attic Insulation in Selma, NC

Selma Homes and Their Attics

Mill Villages of the Lizzie and Ethel Mills

The Selma Cotton Mills opened in 1904, the Lizzie in 1907 and the Ethel in 1910, and each housed its own workers. The town's 1982 historic resources study describes those mill cottages as very modest, mostly one story, put up from about 1900 to 1910. In the early 1920s the mills competed for hands with newspaper ads that offered free rent with electric lights. A 2011 nomination counts about twenty mill houses in the Lizzie village east of downtown. Wiring that went into a village around then can still be knob-and-tube. An electrician checks it before insulation is blown in, because ENERGY STAR calls old wiring like that a fire hazard where insulation touches it.

Brick Ranches in West Selma

West Selma, listed in 2011, is the only largely residential historic district in town. Its nomination traces houses from about 1880 to 1961. It notes a large group of ranches, the first built in 1944, with the form lasting into the 1970s and growing plainer as it went. Postwar Minimal Traditional houses of one or one-and-a-half stories stand there too. A ranch keeps its roof low, so the attic pinches down to a few inches where the rafters meet the outside walls. That edge is where insulation and airflow collide. Rafter vents, or baffles, hold a channel open above the soffit vents so the attic floor can be covered all the way out without blocking them.