Calculations for the Cost to Not Hire Stellrr were made based on an average home with $2,400 in annual energy bills, 10 years of expected home ownership, and an estimated $10,000 project cost. Based on the home has 2 HVAC units, 2,000 square feet, and the homeowner has a $100,000 annual income.

If you wait to fix the home, what happens when you go to sell the home? Legally, you have to disclose the problems that have been identified. This means any buyer may require the items to be fixed before closing on the home. So you will pay to do the work after inflation. 

The work won’t be done at today’s prices so it will cost you more. The cost of construction in Austin is rising by 1% per month. So if you sell in 10 years, it will cost you $23,000* to fix it then. It means it will cost you $13,000* more to do it in 10 years than today. 

If we solve the problem now, at a cheaper cost, you can enjoy better comfort and health from IAQ. You don’t have to worry about a listing price reduction. You’ll have fewer outrageous bills. Fewer pest issues, cheaper solar, longer HVAC unit life, and more. All you have to do is get the Space Age Cleanse. We fix all of those issues.

If I’m going to have to pay to fix the house now or later. I’m going to do it now so I can enjoy the benefits. I don’t want to fix it at the closing table so someone else’s family does not have these problems. 

Putting the cost of this repair in the stock market should give you a higher ROI, right? Let’s look at the facts. The S&P 500 has a 20-year Annual Return Rate before fees of 7.5%. The average brokerage management fee is 1.5%. Meaning the stock market will give you a 6% return. 

The ROI with Stellrr is outperforms the stock market by 631%*. 

The Annual Rate of Return after taxes is 20.87% with Stellrr, subtracting the 6% return in the S&P500, it will cost you 14.87%* in LOWER annual return to put the funds in the stock market instead of with Stellrr on this repair. 

Plus, you’d have to worry about the ups and downs of the stock market. You’d have to pay taxes on the stocks, reducing your earnings. You would not be taxed on the savings from Stellrr’s work. By Cleansing it, you get comfort, lower bills, and profit on selling the home.

You only save $83.33* per month by NOT doing this. You can try to save that small amount of money or potentially spend it on each of the items described above. Even if you do nothing, your property taxes will rise more than $83.33*[MO PMT] per month next year. 

If your bills aren’t outrageous, you think, there is no need to do anything. What you have to remember is that energy costs rise. In fact, ForecastChart shows that the average energy cost rise from 1956 to 2018 was 4.33% each year. 

You could live with the higher bills and then eventually fix it when bills get outrageous. But if we solve it now and lower your usage. Then you never have to worry. 

To not fix the house will cost an extra $13,839.60* in energy bills over 10 years. And you’ll never get back the money paid to the Energy Company. 

If you got the Space Age Cleanse, each item is addressed and increases property value. According to the Appraisal Journal, they estimate $20.73 is added to the resale value of a home for every $1 of yearly energy savings. 

Not doing this will cost you $21,731.00* on property value. 

You wouldn’t need to produce as much energy if your home was more efficient. We have found that Solar can drop your bill, but you have a $43,462.00* cost in solar to get your bill to $0. If you Cleanse your home first, you reduce your required panels by up to 1/2.  

Getting solar will cost you $21,731.00* more when you don't Cleanse the home first. 

You can achieve the same utility bill and lower your carbon footprint by Cleansing the home first.  

If it is important to you to keep pests under control and prevented. Then you’ll want regular pest service and for them to manage the attic pests. The pest guy will offer to replace your insulation after the infestation. But they will blow back in fiberglass insulation for the attic floor. They install the same stuff that attracts pests. Then they can serve you with more insulation in a few years.

But when Cleansing the home, we remove the Speedy Gonzalez Bed & Breakfast. We keep the floor free. We seal out the pest, making it so you can trace any activity instantly. You can spot the pest access hole from 20 feet away. Their trails are no longer tunneled under all the floor insulation.

With attic floor insulation, the Pest tech would ruin the insulation to search through it for all the tunnels and access points. Now, we can fix your attic with foam or all-boric cellulose. Your pest guy would approve of cellulose because boric is a pest deterrent. We can go either way, but we are just telling you that the Space Age Cleanse is the best option.

To let the pest control guy have it their way will cost the average person an additional $7,368.08* in pest services. This does not account for the cost of them replacing your insulation every 10-15 years.

When your HVAC goes out, the tech will recommend a 2-stage unit instead of a single stage. This allows the humidity to be managed better. Managing the humidity properly will remove the environment that grows dust mites, viruses, bacteria, and mold. 

Stellrr solves the need for a 2-stage unit with the attic dehumidifier required when you foam the roof. No other insulation contractor in Central Texas installs dehumidifiers. To go the HVAC guys direction with... 

...a 2-stage unit will cost you $10,634.00* more than what you'd need if Stellrr fixed your attic first.

PLUS, if you are looking at HVAC REPLACEMENT

If an efficient unit is important to you, when you replace your AC, you’ll want a higher seer unit since it will run so much. Plus, you may want it to cool faster, so you may go to a bigger unit, for which each 1ton can cost thousands. If you replace it with the same size... 

...because you didn't tighten the building envelope with Stellrr, that same size unit will cost you an additional 2.5*tons. 

AND, about replacing or DUCTWORK

If it is important to you to get colder air, repair pest damage, and be up to code so you aren’t wasting energy... 

...you’ll need to replace your ductwork which will cost you $14,252.44*. 

If we Cleansed your attic to move your ductwork out of a hostile environment. We would effectively triple insulate and air seal your ductwork, then replacement is irrelevant. The pest repairs won’t be needed because ducts won’t be in contact with the attic floor insulation. The AC guy can replace it, add more blown insulation, and attract those pests. But you won't get results. The problems will persist, and in 10-15 years, you'll have them replace your insulation again.

With a Space Age Cleansed attic, ductwork becomes irrelevant because it is within the building envelope, and all leakage stays inside and is never lost. Duct leakage averages 20-40%, according to the Department of Energy. So it will cost you 20-40% of your utility bills and cooling speed to focus on the ductwork instead of the root problem we solve.

Many people mistakingly try to solve their home comfort and energy efficiency problems by replacing their windows and doors. Unfortunately, they don't see the desired results and hire us to solve them. 

So they just spent $50,000 on windows, and now they need to hire us, plus the windows. They could have removed the need for windows and hired us instead. Or they could have gotten lower-grade windows. Why? Because when the attic is fixed, you don't need as high end of windows.

It costs on average $24,130.00* more to have done the windows first because of more expensive windows. Or it cost $48,260.00* for windows that didn't have to be replaced in the first place.  

If you are going to do windows, you need to do the Space Age Cleanse first because it changes what windows are required. Most of the heat is from the attic. Your front door doesn’t get to 150 degrees, does it? No. Your attic does get to 150 degrees. It bakes your air ductwork. As outrageous as it seems, having your air ducts run outside your house would be better. It would be a much more hostile environment than your attic. 

Having lived with the allergens this long, you probably don't realize its effect on your health. It just seems normal to you. But when your IAQ is better, you'll be surprised at what can improve. Your IAQ contributes to missing work from allergy headaches, colds, mold, etc. Let's say you earn $100,000 per year or $400 per day. 

If you or someone in the family missed 5 days a year (2 or 3 days for each adult) over the next 10 years, not hiring Stellrr would cost you $20,000 in missed work. 

There will always be someone offering to do the job cheaper. That does not mean they do it right. It doesn't mean it is a cheaper apples-to-apples comparison. More importantly, what happens when there is an issue? Will they stand behind their work? Will they fix a callback? Remediate it if they cause mold. If they install bad foam, can they bear the expense of fixing it, or will they just file bankruptcy? Are they established enough to weather the storm, or will they be here for you if they mess up on someone else? 

Any contractor who tells you stuff doesn't break when doing work on a house is lying to you. We have had stuff break, and we take care of it. Others will force u to pay for it. We have seen many people come into and leave the industry. Stellrr has been here, and we have a reputation as a company. We are locally owned. We are well-insured and well-capitalized. If we mess something up, we will still be here for u. If we mess up, we fess up, fix up, and get up. 

We have seen the cost of other contractor insulation mistakes cost the homeowner between $1,000 and $50,000. In rare situations, it is a catastrophic loss for the homeowner. A handful of Austin insulation contractors have shut down their companies in the last few years because of these major mistakes. Each has dodged the penalties and is working under new assumed names. 

The foam is plastic. IECC and the Fire Marshall require an Ignition or Thermal Barrier to be installed between spray foam and any space where humans could work, live, or store items. There are different types of Ignition Barrier. For example, if exterior walls are foamed, and then drywall is installed, coming into contact with the foam, this is considered a Thermal Barrier.

However, an intumescent coating is an attic's easiest and most effective barrier. You can save a few dollars on the installation. If you have a house fire, the insurance company could completely deny your claim, costing you several hundred thousand dollars. 

Intumescent also slows the spread of flames feeding, which gives you more time to get out with the people and things you love. This also gives the fire department more time to respond and extinguish the fire. The air-tight spray-foamed house burns slower because it is not fed with oxygen like a traditional leaky vented attic. You will sleep easier when you do the right thing.

Check out my video on Fiberglass and Owens Corning. OC sells shingles. OC sells pink fiberglass. They do not want you to buy other products. They want the builder to buy their entire product line. And they trash foam. 

The truth about foam is that it does raise the shingle temperature about 5 degrees. But that is it. If shingles cannot handle 5 degrees more heat than we get in Austin, then they better not sell shingles in other parts of the country where it is 5 degrees warmer than Austin.  

Further, if the foam is “bad” for shingles, why is the owner of the Klaus Roofing franchise network spray-foaming the underside of his roof? I was recently visiting with Klaus Larson at an event and posed this same question to him. He agreed with my statements and shared that the roof on his new, very large home was being foamed as Stellrr does daily. 

I foresee that this misinformation that has been spread since the 1980s will begin to change. Why is that? Owens Corning and Johns Manville (the 2 behemoths in roofing) just bought into the foam manufacturing business. I wonder if the old marketing department that trashed foam is still employed?

What about roof leaks, repairs, or replacements?

My childhood home, mentioned in the paragraphs above, had the roof replaced just before my parents sold it. The house was 20 years old and had been foamed. Of the entire house, there was part of a sheet of decking that needed replacing. The decking was in a valley and had some rot. It came up without damaging the foam, and was replaced. Easy. 

I’ve asked several of my roofing friends about their real world experience here. They say that open cell foamed roof DO allow them to find leaks. Open cell is porous and allows moisture to come through close to the leak location. 

They say that only 3-5% of roofs need any decking replaced, and at that, it is usually only a sheet of decking regardless if it is a foamed or blown in roof. 

If you have to have your roof replaced, it will probably be done with insurance money. So if any foam has to be repaired or replaced, the insurance will cover that as well. But guess how many calls or jobs we have done to repair foam after a roof replacement? We did one job years ago. And it was not because the foam needed repairing. The foam was attached directly to the metal roof. The metal roof was damaged when their carport was blown onto the roof and dented it badly. The roof was able to be removed without damaging the closed cell foam. The building owner wanted to replace the foam because he didn’t like the job my competitor did, and he wanted it to look pretty. So he hired us to re-do the foam 100% since it was a metal building with exposed foam. 

Unfortunately, there is much misinformation out there. The Technical Data Sheets is where you can read the Burn Characteristics rather than just taking their word for it. Below are the details for the foam Stellrr installs. It gives you some information, but what does it mean? Those answers can be found in the CCRR or ESR report for each manufacturer's foam formulation.

You will see in the CCRR document that there are conditions where the foam can be applied without a prescriptive ignition barrier. This wording is very challenging for foam contractors and homeowners to interpret. For example, one sentence means if the attic space is less than 30 inches tall and less than 30 sq ft, then a coating is unnecessary. This is true. So you might have a small side attic this small, without an access door. But your main attic will be bigger than this and would need the barrier. 

Another method of tricking the Burn Test is using a non-traditional Corner Burn Test. And some foams pass this test, including ours. But that test is not generally accepted, so what happens when the house burns and someone dies? When lawsuits happen, the manufacturer has a way to weasel their way out of liability. 

The insurance company has a way to get out of paying. Insurance doesn't want to pay out if they can avoid it. So do you really want to risk it? It is better to do the right thing and install the code-required ignition or thermal barrier.

There is foam with OCX in the brand name. This foam has a chemical mixed into it that helps reduce ignition. We have used this foam but installed the ignition barrier over it as the code requires. We stopped using OCX-branded material because it gives off more VOCs, it is very easy to spray bad foam and cover up the mistake, it leaves more of a fishy odor. 

Beware, we have seen several competitors claiming their foam is Appendix X or OCX, but when they provide the TDS, it is not OCX foam. Either the contractor doesn't know or is lying. 

Regardless of manufacturer, all foam in an attic bigger than 30sq ft and 30in tall must have an IB. Attics, where stuff is stored or open to living areas must have a TB installed.

Why can't you get a straightforward answer about intumescent coatings? It is about money. Foam manufacturers want to sell more, and having this additional step will cost the Home Builder or Homeowner more money. Meaning they may choose fiberglass instead of foam. While selling foam without an IB is easier, we believe in doing the right thing. 

The attic temperature will be 130 degrees for many months of the year. What is that extreme heat doing to your attic mechanical equipment or stuff stored there? To rent a small storage unit will cost $1,200 per year, or $12,000 over 10 years. 

With Stellrr's Space Age Cleanse, we make the attic 5-10 degrees different than the inside of your house. As I write this, it is 101 degrees outside. My upstairs thermostat is set to 72. My primary bedroom upstairs sensor says 72. The attic sensor in my Space Age Cleansed attic says 71. 

What could you or the future homeowner use that space for? A 130-150 degree attic will age your ductwork prematurelyand burn out your AC unit faster. Other trades will have more issues, work slower, and charge more to work in a hot nasty attic than a cleansed Stellrr attic. 

The Dirty Truth About Attic Blown Fiberglass

Fiberglass performs okay in two seasons of the year. A Space Age Cleansed attic performs well in all four seasons. Why is that? According to Oak Ridge National Labs, fiberglass performs at ½ of its stated R-value in extreme outdoor temperatures. So to have an effective barrier with fiberglass in all four seasons will require twice as much as code requires.

Seal it Tight. Ventilate it Right. A leaky house is not healthy for you or the house. A sealed house without mechanical ventilation can be troublesome as well. So the answer is to seal it tight so that you can control everything. Then set up the mechanical ventilation so that only “breathes” as much as is necessary. 

So what happens if you spray foam my attic, converting it from a vented to an encapsulated attic? Will it be too tight?

No. You will still have leaky walls & windows and bottom plates, and doors opening. This is sufficient. However, you can upgrade your mechanical ventilation, so that you introduce a certain amount of air into your house at set intervals daily. If we are building a combustion closet for you, we are still bringing in fresh (make up) air into that closet, so fresh air will be introduced. But you can also have what is called an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV). ERVs are a luxury, and rarely installed even in new custom build homes. 

Your tight house will now allow you to manage the humidity inside the house. One way of managing the humidity is through our SaniDry dehumidifier system. 

Let’s talk more about moisture in the air. Austin is a very humid environment, often 80-90% humidity. This creates a great environment for all sorts of things to grow. If we are constantly bringing in humid air from outside, then we are creating a not so healthy environment inside. We need to seal up the house air leaks not only for energy savings & comfort. But we need to seal up the house for our health. Then we can manage the humidity more effectively. And we can stop mold growth, wood rot, and protect the house structurally. 

Do you need a dehumidifier? If your house is sealed up properly, your HVAC unit will pull the humidity out of the air effectively in the summer, while avoiding bringing in excess outside humidity. But, in the cool part of the year, if your house is efficient, you won’t be running your HVAC enough to pull the humidity out of the air. 

In Austin, it is a good practice to have a self-draining dehumidifier like SaniDry installed either in your crawlspace or attic. 

It is true, you can get rebates from Austin Energy if you are their customer. And the IRS is allowing homeowners a Tax Credit. But is it significant and worth doing? Let’s answer that!

AUSTIN ENERGY (AE)

The AE Home Performance Rebates under “weatherization” are deceptive. You can only file for this AE rebate once every 10 years. You have to pay City of Austin inspection fees which start at $88.20 and go up. 

How much will AE pay for insulation work?

-- Air Infiltration & Duct Sealing: $0.12/sq ft

-- Attic Insulation: $0.0035/ sq ft X Increased R-value – $45 set up fee.

So let’s calculate what that means on a 1,000 sq ft attic:

-- Air Infiltration & Duct Sealing: 1,000 sq ft attic X $0.12 = $120 Rebate

-- Attic Insulation: 1,000 sq ft attic X $0.0035 per sq ft X R-25 Increased R-value = $87.00 – $45 set up fee = $43.50 Rebate

So a 1,000 sq ft attic with a current R-value of 0, would receive $120 + $43.50 = $163.50 in Rebates before Inspection Processing fees which start at $88.20 and go up. 

Is it worth it? Here is where it gets worse. 

You can only file for the AE Home Performance Rebates once every 10 years. So if you file a claim for insulation, then you cannot file a claim when you do HVAC upgrades. Now, HVAC upgrades is where the City of Austin WILL pay more. HVAC is what they are referring to when they say people get up to $1,800 in rebates. 

Here are a few things they rebate for

-- HVAC System Tune Up $175.00 each

-- Smart Thermostat $30.00 each

-- Solar Screens on Single Pane Windows $1.00 / sq ft

-- Ductwork replacement $3.25 / linear foot

-- External static pressure $175.00 first HVAC system

The bottom line is you should save your AE Rebates for HVAC work. And as you read in the FAQ above, Insulation should absolutely be done before HVAC because it reduces your HVAC requirements which reduces the cost of your HVAC work. 

Homeowners can receive up to a $1,200 credit on Energy Efficient Home Improvements like Insulation. The homeowner can claim up to 30% of the cost of the improvement. The maximum a homeowner can receive in insulation-related credits is $1,200 in the calendar year. 

On next year’s Tax Return, your Tax Preparer would claim 30% of the cost of materials (roughly 50% of the project cost). The maximum you can claim is a credit of $1,200. So if the job cost $10,000, and 50% of that is materials, then you have $5,000 of qualifying cost. So $1,500 is the 30% claim. However, the maximum you can claim is $1,200. So your Tax Preparer would claim $1,200 on your IRS paperwork. You would need your receipt from Stellrr to turn in to the IRS. 

Insulation materials or systems and air sealing materials or systems: must meet the criteria established by the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) standard in effect at the start of the year that is two years prior to the year the materials or systems are placed in service. For example, materials or systems placed in service in 2025 must meet the criteria established by the IECC standard in effect on January 1, 2023, to qualify for the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit in 2025.

It is okay not to finance the work. But if you were to finance it, you would only be investing $83.33* [TOTAL/120mo] per month over the next 10 years, or if rolled into the mortgage $27.78* [TOTAL/360mo] per month. The cost of not doing it is significantly more.