Attic Insulation in Wendell, NC

Wendell Homes and Their Attics

The Tobacconists' Houses on Wendell Boulevard

The Wendell Boulevard Historic District, listed in 2009, was the chosen neighborhood of the town's tobacconists. That was the local word for anyone who made a living from the crop: warehouse owners, brokers, auctioneers and bankers. Its 59 main buildings date from about 1890 to 1958, and building there nearly stopped in the early 1930s. None of them had to meet a state insulation standard when new, and the nomination is silent on what their builders put overhead. Look for gray, dirty patches in that old insulation. ENERGY STAR reads them as signs of house air filtering up through a gap below, which we seal. The insulation around it can usually stay.

Dormers, a Cape Cod and an Aeroplane Bungalow

Several houses in the district are a story and a half, with rooms tucked under the roof. The nomination describes a gambrel-roofed house with twin front dormers and a Colonial Revival house with three inset dormers. There is also a hipped house with a dormer on every side, and the district's only true Cape Cod. One house, the county's only aeroplane bungalow, perches a small two-bedroom second story above a spreading ground floor. Each upstairs room of this kind has low side walls, and behind them sits a narrow triangle of attic. A building guide from Iowa's health department singles out that triangle as a frequent leak. We seal and insulate it, plus the open floor bays beneath those low walls, not only the attic overhead.