24 Feb Install Attic Access Jacket
Most attics have a fair amount of air leaking occurring within them. The yellowblue attic access jacket is custom-made to provide thorough sealing effects to an attic hatch.
So at this part of the process, we’re nearing wrapping up the air sealing and the protrusions through the home envelope.
The last thing we’re going to address is the attic access itself and these are one of the biggest culprits in terms of air leaking. What we have here is an attic jacket and it’s got a flange on it. This flange gets installed around the frame and then this actually has a zippered door that allows it to be completely sealed and stop the air intrusion between the home and the attic. So, we’re going to go ahead and start installing this thing and get it wrapped up.
The first thing you want to do is go ahead and dry fit the flange around the opening and make sure that you have the right size for your opening and for your attic access.
What we’re going to do is attach the flange to some framing that we’ve installed using cap nails. Some people might think it’s adequate just to use some staples, but we want to make sure that this stays in place for years and years and has no issues, and staples might not work as well as a cap nail might. Simply installing these cap nails with a hammer around the flange is all it really takes and then we’ll button it up and seal it up a little bit when we got it nailed down.
So we’ve gotten our attic jacket installed and while I was traveling up and down the ladder, I noticed that there’s some big air gaps between the framing. So although the jacket would seal, the framing isn’t. We’re just going to touch this up a little bit with a little bit of the same caulk that we’ve been using and seal these gaps here around the entire frame.
