Attic Insulation in Southport, NC

Southport Homes and Their Attics

Double Cottages From the 1890s Building Boom

Southport's building boom came with its new name in the late 1880s. The historic district's nomination says local carpenters built dozens of double cottages in the 1890s: one story, with a narrow center passage and two rooms on each side. In the typical example it describes, all four rooms had fireplaces, served by two chimneys set inside the house on the wall between the front and back rooms. Chimneys placed that way pass up through the ceiling and the attic floor. The opening around the brick gets thin aluminum sheet and caulk rated for high heat, and a sheet metal collar around the chimney holds the insulation back. Codes usually want 2 inches of clearance between insulation and a masonry chimney.

Story-and-a-Half Houses With Rooms Under the Roof

Rooms tucked under the roof go back a long way here. A Southport doctor recalled that the town's early one-story houses always had finished rooms in the attic, lit by dormers. The nomination adds that the old hall-and-parlor cottages kept their upstairs for bedrooms or storage. Builders of the 1890s kept the idea. The nomination records a story-and-a-half house built on Atlantic Avenue in the spring of 1895 and a near copy finished that October. Upstairs in a house like that, short knee walls stand between the rooms and narrow side attics. ENERGY STAR counts the cavities behind and beneath knee walls as common leak points, so the side attics get air sealed and insulated as well as the main attic floor.