Hello, FilterForGoodians! Did the title of this post throw you for a loop? Well, of course you could and should never think of insulating your home with marshmallow fluff, but the spray-foam insulation I recently had installed in my attic looks just like dessert!

I wrote last week about my new windows.** I’m now convinced that the key to a greener home, not to mention lower electricity bills, is insulation. When I bought my home a few years ago, I never really considered how poorly insulated it was. But, after a few summers in New Orleans, my electricity bills made it painfully clear that something needed to be done.

I knew my windows were original to the house, but I thought the real culprit was the pink fiberglass in the attic (or the lack there of). Before I bought my house, I remember the inspector telling me that I needed to get another six to twelve inches of insulation blown in. I had gone up there several times and noticed two things. First, I could see several patches of the attic floor throughout the space. Second, it was hot as heck!

Over the course of three years, I got several estimates for insulation, and for all types. First, I considered a do-it-yourself solution - rolled, pink insulation from a hardware store. I was always a little scared of this option, though. I remember my dad laying the stuff when I was a kid, and he wouldn’t let us touch it because he said it would cut our fingers and get in our eyes and float into our lungs. How could something that looked so much like cotton candy be so deadly?

Next, I considered blown-in fiberglass insulation. I pictured mounds of fluffy-white snow in my attic, and me and my family below in our living quarters bundled up in blankets and coats. It was while I was getting these blown-in quotes, that the contractors starting telling me about spray-foam insulation.

I always wanted the sprayed in stuff, but a few years ago, it was way too expensive. Years passed, electricity bills came and went, and we got used to the way things were - our house was hot, the end. Then, I started writing for this blog, and green things are always on my radar. After a year of writing for this blog, I started paying attention to my energy consumption, and started scrutinizing my house’s inefficient characteristics again.

With a renewed sense of eco-responsibility, I started calling contractors again. Now, three years later, I was surprised that the price of spray-foam insulation had fallen considerably. In fact, it was almost half the price it was a few years ago. The Federal Energy Tax Credit** was the tipping point. We get 30% off the cost of our installation (up to $1500) back, and the same applied to our window installation.

When it was all said and done, and after we file our ‘09 income taxes, the attic insulation will have cost us around $1,000. If even that sounds too expensive, consider the fact that for the past three months our electricity bills were well over $100 less than the bills from the same months last year. If we keep that up, this green upgrade will pay for itself by the Spring.

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