Yep… This is my house.. and this is me fixing MY mistake 

Looks like the cobblers kid is finally getting a set of shoes! 😃

I love videos like this that show everyday homeowner things and tips most of us viewers can relate too. Sure the 10 million dollar lakefront, hilltop homes are nice and all, but realistically, most people don't have that budget. Alternatively, showing your own home, confessing to some mistakes, and doing typical layman renovations is what I can really connect to, learn from, and try do myself. Thanks for today's video!

The painters house is the last house to be painted in the neighborhood.....

CONFESSIONAL (mistakes) = 10x recommend person as trustworthy builder

First, you showed dedication climbing into your attic during a Tx summer. 2nd, never knew wind wash was a thing.

I love how you build fancy homes but you live in a modest home!!!

Matt, it is refreshing to see a contractor not only own, but publish to everyone the mistakes they have made. We are a commercial/industrial contractor in the southwest and it says a lot about the quality and honesty of a company that does this. Well done and keep up the great work on the Build Show.

My faith in the world is shook..... the man that introduced me to building science, conditioned attics, and thermal envelops doesn’t have spray foam in his own attic..... In Texas no less.

Old homes are awesome. Blown in insulation is still the most practical and economical solution for the attic. We did a retro with our existing rigid vents with aeroseal and replaced our furnace with Mitsubishi air handler and heat pump. 👍

I've always been a stickler for safety and doing a job right. When ever I start a job for myself or someone else, I ask myself what would a knowledgeable and respected build do? Matt, you always come to mind. Thank you for the great videos and the time you spend making them.

Love the smart baffles, used them myself when the roof was replaced last summer. I used a table saw set just above the table top and just barely notched the baffles to bend them like you showed. It worked out great!

I like the SmartBaffle, and installed it. The fiberglass batts where shoved right to the top plate, so any inler soffit air had to flow thru the batts. The Smart Baffle gave the 2" air path. However, a year later I noticed the center of the SB was pushed up against the roof deck by the pressure of the batts. I suspect the hi attic temps allowed the SB baffle to flex. So I cut a approx 6" width of SB, folded it into a long triangle shape and foil taped it together. Then slide the long triangle up the center of the SB against the roof deck to hold the SB center down against the batts. And put a piece of foil tape to hold the triangle in place to the baffle. I have my full 2 inches again, and I'll see how well that holds up.

I used a long grabber, like to pick up stuff with to reach from inside the attic to add baffles, then stapled them up before I blew attic cat. It was easy just used plywood to lay on to reach the vents. Spray foam in my vented attic was not a good option. The house wasn't built for that. Go with what your house us built for, I have 18 or more inches of loose fill now, so it's well insulate. I did seal the gaps and all the cracks from above before I filled.

Rockwool; no weather will move it. Blown solution is expected to be moved by significant drafts.

Thanks for all of your insights Matt. Keep up the great work!

Great video! We're neck deep in renovating our 1984 house in SC. Tackling the roof & sheathing next Fall....

Been watching your show for 1 month - DIY project around my house durung that time and all thanx to you! Keep making this awesome video!!!!

I recently installed these baffles in my attic…FROM THE INSIDE!! I have a very low pitch roof too. It sucked, but we landed on a pretty good solution. Basically.… 1-we widened our eave vent opening to the width of the rafter bay 2-took a 1”x2”x8’ board and started a screw in each end (one for the guy inside the attic and the other for the guy outside at the eave. Screwed that “runner” the distance of the folded sides of the baffles, plus 1/4”, below the roof deck. 3-screwed three baffles end to end 4-slid the baffle from the eave opening towards the guy in the attic 5-folded the eave end down to cap off the opening from the insulated space. 6-installed bug screening and vent on eave. Hope this helps someone!

Talking about mistakes creates the most interest in all of us to learn

Thanks Matt: I have to admit I watch every day. Great job always

I have to reshingle my roof next year, I know what I'm going to do as part of that reno. Thanks Matt!

Thanks for sharing our mistakes. You are a breve man!

You rock Matt. You keep it real and inform so well.

I especially enjoy your vids like this with tips/ideas and latest tech for retrofitting. I would love to build one of these new fancy super insulated homes, but alas like probably a lot of folks watching, can't afford it. So these vids are super helpful on things I can do to improve my old 60's ranch. Cheers and thanks!

I had the same issue except I used that tan baffle from the home center. I stapled it in from the inside of the attic. I have a 5/12 roof on a 1965 ranch in Dallas and the area by the top plate is TIGHT. I would like to remove all my insulation because it is a mix of a few blows with some cedar shingles mixed in whenever the cedar roof was removed. I look forward to see what you end up doing. My HVAC system will be completely built new once my existing 20 year old system gives up the ghost. I too want to condition my attic but am not sold on spray foam both from offgassing and fire reasons. I recently saw a video of firefighters having a horrible time dealing with an encapsulated attic with sprayfoam. The noxious smoke from the foam looked terrible. It took them 45 minutes to knock down the attic fire, which caused significant damage to the house.

Thanks for this honest video. Most houses up here in upstate New York do not have conditioned attics and need solutions like this. Many people find their attic ventilation shortchanged by batts pressed against the soffits or washed out blown in insulation for reasons you showed in the video. I’m dealing with this myself so thank you for introducing that product. I’m going to encourage my insulator to install those instead of whatever else he was using, but it seems unlikely he will be able to make a good seal between the top plate of the outer wall and the vent, just because access will be tight.

Looking forward to seeing how you fix this. I have the same issues.

Change is inevitable, growth is optional. So, my thanks for bringing us along as you learn and share in successes and failures.

Looking forward to see your new roof matt. Thanks for the tips👍

Love that the "outro" ia back to normal. Keep that going.

Nice video, thanks for sharing the experience of your own house. I always find it fascinating that building styles and products in use can be so different even in todays world (I'm from central europe, and blow-in-insulation is practically unheard of. We have sheets of insulation material, many different kinds, but nothing like that material you showed here).

I’ve also used rockwool insulation to go from top plate to the bottom of vents. Holds in place great and has a higher r value than your blown in to help with thermal transfer at top plate

Matt- thanks for highlighting this solution and product-I can fully endorse this as a truly cost effective durable solution - i even retrofitted from the inside with a pretty low slope-not fun but definitely doable for the DIY. DCI has a number of other interesting roofing vent related products tho this is arguably their home run product IMO.

Matt, it will be interesting to see a comparison of power usage before and after the remodel. I wonder what R.O.I. you're expecting for the remodel costs?

This is typical, cabinet guy has no doors on his kitchen cabinets, painter's house never gets painted, flooring guy is walking on concrete, and a general contractor's house is usually a complete wreck. Nobody wants to do work all day, usually 10 or 12 hours, and come home and work some more.

At least he admits when he messed up and how to retrofit to fix it. Kudos sir.

Here in Quebec City, we use cardboard made for this application, really cheap and effective, we also use those Styrofoam when we put them from the interior but you really got to be careful if there is no stopper like in your case. Houses with no stopper here are rare but I see them from time to time. I also don't know why you have this much wind in your attic, the ventilation hole in your soffit are not that big but we don't have hurricane/tornado winds here.

I am going to be redoing my roof soon. Will have to get my hands on this. Agree, box stores dont have great solutions.

None of my local roofing suppliers would take the time to find this for me, so I ended up making my own. Call your local sign shop, like Westar Solutions and do it yourself. Thanks for sharing Matt R. your knowledge is priceless.

One of my bucket list goals for my cookie cutter house a conditioned attic space. ❤️

I was thinking Matt, you should have a red pointer so we can see some of the details where you can't get close to..Just a thought.

Matt this shows guts. Great video buddy!

Matt, you might want to check out attic vent, they are plastic and are great baffles for a retrofit job like this.

You're an awesome dude. From Colorado. Built my house using a lot of your methods

Fantastic explanation and smart retrofit install of these baffles from the roof side!

Just when I thought it couldn’t get better! Looking forward to the Mitsubishi hvac videos

I would think you'd spray foam the wall plate area in addition to the vent panels so you would actually improve the lack of Insulation in that area over hoping you can pack in enough blown in.

I ended up cutting 6’ pieces of R30, pulled the blown in insulation away from outer wall & replaced with the R30. The wind outa the west was so strong it would blow the insulation away every year until I did this fix.

Great...now I have to climb into my attic and check for wind-wash. Thanks Matt. :) Good informative video. I'm thinking of a metal roof as well but our current asphalt roof is only about 7 years old.

I did something like this several years ago in my house. We still had the old small metal vent panels on our soffit. One of them fell off and revealed just a round hole underneath, thus starting my snowballing big project. I replaced all the vents with new ones and cut each hole bigger and more rectangular. Each time I took a vent off, a big pile of blown insulation fell on me. This led to me going in the attic and attaching a 1/8” plywood panel to the rafters. Each was only 16x36, making it pretty easy to manage. Our roof had a steep pitch and not too hard to get in to the bottom. I also waited til the wintertime to do this. After all that, I blew in more insulation and all was good.

Nice. This couldn't have come at a better time. I've got the opposite problem (the insulation has been blown into my soffit and prevents air from coming in at all) but this method is exactly the fix I want. Salesperson will be at my house tonight to bid the job and I will be asking for smartbaffle.

Thank you for sharing Matt. I have a similar issue and was looking to do what you have done on some other projects, either foam board or the rock wool on top the deck. The con is that it will raise the roof profile and give it a "heavy" appearance. I'm guessing that is why you didn't go with that choice. Is there any other reason I shouldn't switch my insulation to the top side of the deck that I am missing? Please give me a comment back, I value your opinion and don't want to make a choice that I will regret. Keep the videos coming, enjoy your articles in JLC also!

I absolutely love that you share your mistakes with us as well as your triumphs. I have a question on my home, its a late 70s early 80s double wide with the center third of the house being a cathedral ceiling. Each other end is a conventional truss roof system with one turtle vent and two gable vents per end. The current plan is to tear off the asphalt shingles and install 4 inches of EPS foam, a radiant barrier, 1x purloins then steel. My question is at that point should I just blow the attic space above the ends full and remove the limited ventilation there is, less roof penetrations the better. Or do I need to keep the ventilation in place even though there will be R-16 and the radiant barrier above it? Bear in mind there are fiberglass bats above the ceilings already in place. We live in central KS so we get the heat and the cold, and not much in between other than the few days in spring and fall that are actually nice!

im a electrician I subscribed to this guy because he is one the few humans that will admit they made a mistake freaking awesome 😎 no one is perfect learn from your mistakes

Thank you so much for filming remodel work like this. I've bought an uninsulated 1950's/60's house in Georgia, and our budget and time constraints mean we have to cashflow every project. I soak up almost everything you have to say about hot/humid climates and insulation. Is there any reason why I couldn't spray closed cell on the underside of 1x6 roof decking? Have you covered it in another video that I missed? God bless!

Damn, as soon as I saw the soffit vents I knew you needed baffles. We had new blown insulation installed and insisted on baffles as part of the scope of work. Alas...another typical 69-70's house that needs modern mods to perform better. Better flow, control and cooling. But no one even has an idea about how important those baffles are in an older house. They made a massive difference in how cool the house stays in the summer heat. To the point we no longer use AC in the summer. At all.

Used tyvek cut to 4 foot lengths stapled to rafters and sill plate., worked great. there aren't a lot of options out there for this issue.

Excellent! Great information

i wish i saw that product when i did my roof. Thats pretty cool.

Check out the high velocity low pressure HVAC system. Uses 2" thinwall PVC duct/vent system.

Have been thinking along similar lines but using Foamular or similar sheets to fasten directly to the roof joists. That way im addition to creating the vent pathway, I'd be adding some insulation as well. Although that's probably more of a hassle in a truss roof like yours.

Thank you Matt again! I read in Parade magazine lighting rod built inside our houses not exterior. Is that True? I never saw a lightning rod in my attic built in 1974.

Looking forward to how you handle the duct work!

It’s amazing how much we can overlook when working on houses. Who woulda thought that wind coming through the soffit vents would be enough to push insulation around?

Would love to see a retrofit to go from vented attic to conditioned attic. Thinking about doing it for my house.

It’s interesting to think that the wind pressure through those small holes in the soffit would be enough to create wind wash to move the insulation. I personally believe that there could be another explanation that some how the pressure difference in areas in the attic space caused by the wind could move the insulation. If you look at large sheets of plastic lying on the ground when the wind blows over them they move in a wave like effect just live ocean waves.

While the roof shingles were off it would have been a relatively good time to add "outsulation" on top of the roof rafters. Maybe 6" Polyiso (2 x 3", staggered of course) nailed to top rafters via cap nails, then the new roof deck on top of that. Would require some adjustments around the perimeter but it would help move your HVAC into a conditioned space.

🤔 .... Another great vid by Matt 😎🚬 I also have that messy ol' blown in dirty 'cotton candy'.

With the roofing removed, maybe consider installing a cold roof-or would it be called a "hot roof" in Texas? Then the former ridge vent is easily closed, the space below insulated, and the (new) cold roof is readily vented.

Coroplast is awesome stuff, so useful.

How about radiant barrier for the top of the roof instead of pink insulation ?

Funny story. I did the same thing when I remodeled my house. At the time I was not sure if I was going to replace the rafters. I had planned on fixing the inslation issue when I did my roof as well.

Great video. The video did a great job highlighting general building practice failures. I just moved from a story and a half home that did not have any rafter baffles. I had lived in the home 25 years without knowing what a rafter baffle were. Once I realized that they were missing I didn't consider installing the rafter baffles from the outside, so they were never installed. I noticed that the soffit ventilation area seemed to be large enough to support your ridge vents. I also did not see any other attic openings that would short circuit your soffit-ridge ventilation. What did you do to seal and insulate your ceiling penetrations? It is my understanding that Joe Lstiburek's generally recommends installing a vented attic provided; you can adequately air seal the attic floor, the attic can support adequate ventilation, and the attic does not contain HVAC equipment/ducts? Does Joe generally concede that sealing the attic floor with all it's holes is too difficult so it is generally better better to default to a unvented attic?

I'm facing the same issues. I've just added a 3rd Lomanco turbine vent to my roof for starters. I don't have soffets like yours...mine are the traditional 'every 8'' variety, 2"x 10" screens. And yep, my blown insulation is lumpy too.

Matt, what's that ring around the base of you tree??? FYI.. nice product. I lived in central Illinois for years and the wind would do all sorts of crazy things to my insulation too.

it's interesting that your problem was caused by air entering the soffit area and blowing your insulation into the center of the house leaving a lack of insulation around the perimeter of your home. The more common scenario is insulation from the attic building up into the soffit area and plugging air from entering resulting in a lack of ventilation, causing moisture build up and mold. A similar ventilation panel is used here in Canada and is a must to get the air in above the insulation when the insulation blanket is 25 inches deep or more to achieve a minimum "R Value" of 50. Your lucky and wise to make this upgrade at the time of a new roof. I've installed many hundreds of ventilation panels from inside the attic where there is no head room at the eaves and does involve a liberal amount of swearing.

I would use Rafter Vents between each truss, then use 2 inch thick rigid foam boards to fill in the gap from top plate to rafter vents, and you can spay foam the gaps if you wish. Rafter vents are 4 foot long so you can have plenty of insulation in you attic without worrying about soffit wind blowing the insulation around or even down into the soffit area

Thank You for Your Video.

Matt....If only all contractors were like you. I'm surprised you have that much air flow at the soffit. I had the same Hardy board installed at our old house with a ridge vent roof. I found it reduced the airflow by at least 50% so I had to cut in screened louvered vents (roofing section at Lowes approx 8"x12"). The attic finally cooled to allow the heat transfer from within the house and the AC to finally work.

I used 1" xps 4ft long to create my airgaps, hot glued in place for fast installation then tiger foamed the perimeter to hold in place.

How hard would it be to condition that attic? Block the ridge an soffit spray foam right ?

Matt, you can Create a thermal block with open or close cell insulation in your existing attic. Spray it over your existing soffits, ridge vents, backside of roof and create a thermal Barrier this way. I've done this in my house. The temperature in the attic, shocked me, how much lower it was after doing this. I left the existing Close cell blow in insulation in place. I normally agree with everything you do except for in this case. I believe you just made it harder than it needed to be.

Great Job! I'd like an app to measure the keep a record of the air speed and temperature inside these baffles, and in every home you can do.

Saw you at the airport, ABIA, last Saturday, wanted to say hello, but I didn't want to "invade" your space. Like what you do here, BTW

Have you done the video on moving the ducts out of the attic into the conditioned space?

One good thing to do with baffles is to extend them well beyond the height of the insulation. Take tape or foam and seal the baffles on the sides and by the top plate. No wind will effect your insulation this way. Also, building your own is a good option. Thin plywood with wood on the sides creating the vent channel is sturdy and easy to seal.

I'm surprised you didn't mention you were going to vacuum out your soffit vents, since eventually that insulation in the soffits will plug up the holes leading to no ventilation.

Weird thing to hear you saying: "haven't got the money to do it sooner". But I guess the client projects are done with less tight of a budget, so you can produce some quality housing. I'm doing a renevation on my own now and know the feeling about cost savings but haven't really got into shortcutting any details. Budget has been staying under control mostly because I do huge amount of work by myself and I have a bachelors degree on civil engineering. Great channel Matt keep up the good work and it will pay off sooner or later.

Matt; I don't think you made any mistakes given the time period. I'll just about bet money that corrugated baffle wasn't available 11 or so years ago. You used what was available at the time. I'm REALLY glad I watched this because I'm facing the exact same dilemma in Ohio with a late 50's, early 60's home that looks very much like yours upstairs, and I was unaware of the corrugated material. Thanks for that! I too am debating between conditioning it, or cleaning out existing, foaming every gap then reblowing (currently just bats). I'm NOT currently contemplating a roof, and not looking forward to the eves either! Would appreciate your feedback on that. My roof I'm pretty sure just by looking is a 3; even more fun at the eve.....

Matt Risinger you've come a long way since this 4 year old video. Is this still what you'd recommend for an old house that needs a new roof and has terrible old windblown insulation just like yours did? I live in the PNW across the river from Portland, OR in an old 1969 drafty house and want to do it right. Thanks Matt and keep up the good work educating everyone. Wish we had a Matt Risinger approved contractors in our area guaranteed to use Matt's latest discoveries in best practices. Appreciate you.

Thank you. I dont even have vents in every bay of my attic so not sure what to do.maybe every 4th bay has holes.

Maybe I’m missing something but if you added spray foam to the top of the baffles wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of venting the attic because it would block airflow from the soffit to the top air vents? Also, wouldn’t you need a full ridge vent?

Matt, Could you make a video going over all the types or common types of how to insulate/baffle the soffits of an attic? I'm trying to doing one now and I can't seem to come up with a good strategy other than just do it and regret it later when I figure it out. In my case, it doesn't even look like a soffit. So where does the air flow that I need to be concerned with come from and how do I baffle it correctly?

Have you ever considered the foil liner that would continue from soffit vent all the way to the roof peak? Create a direct rent to the top to lower attic temperatures. Perforations in it still let the attic breath but sends the heat out. I forget the name of the perforated foil. Double bubble is similar.

This video likely showed up in my feed today because I did an online search for a vent chute that would hold up to closed cell SPF. I wish I had known about this product years ago. Here in the Chicago area we do a lot of spraying under the roof deck as you said, but in a colder climate it's more critical to maintain ventilation. I worked on a church project where we did SPF under the roof deck but the exterior wall was 8 in CMU with a 4-in brick veneer with no insulation. The heat seems to come out of the wall, hits the soffit and create ice damming anyway thanks to the heat coming out of the wall. When it's time to re-roof the church. I've advised them to install 2x4 battens on top of the roof deck and apply a new deck to create that ventilation channel. It's a gable roof that runs north to south and it's not a problem on the east side but it is on the west. A large tree also creates shade and with the on off sun exposure this probably exacerbates the issue.

I feel like the curtain has just been lifted on the Wizard of Oz. Builds these million dollar energy efficient homes with conditioned attics, but lives in 1970 home with vented attic. Mind blown.

Matt when you say conditioned attic do you put grills there or just the spray foam. If just spray foam wouldnt it be more of an encapsulated attic? As someone who does HVAC that design I can tell you that it makes a difference in type.

Can you turn tabs so there facing down on a 2x6 2x8 rafter for old work

I got those exact same sunglasses!

I love your videos. New code in Florida allows for ducts to be insulated to an R13 and deeply buried. Is this a good cost effective alternative to doing a conditioned attic? How much difference would there be in cost? The issue I see is if the contractor messes up, it would be a terrible job pulling ducts out of some R-38 loose fill. What's your thoughts on this?