Insulation Removal in Fort Myers Beach

What has to come out

Fort Myers Beach is Estero Island, ZIP 33931. It is not the city of Estero and it is not Fort Myers. Removal is a cottage with a vented attic that is wet or contaminated. Most of the island is condominiums. A condo is not a removal.

What stays

A dry cottage attic is sealed and blown to R-38. There is no island shop and no island pin. The street address is 4263 NW 1st Ave in Boca Raton. Call before you expect a truck on the island.

Getting the bags out

Cottage hatches are small and the parking is tight. Bags have to fit the opening and the street. If they will not, the job is not forced.

How the day goes

Look
The hatch in Fort Myers Beach gets opened before a truck is promised. Depth, moisture, and whether the mess is the whole attic or one bay.
Protect
The rooms under the hatch get covered. The bags stay on the path that was agreed. A plaster or wood lid that is already soft stops the day.
Remove
Ruined fill is vacuumed into bags and hauled off. The deck should be visible where the bad fill was. Dry fill next to it is not taken just to make the attic look empty.
Next
Sanitizing only if the insulation was contaminated. Then the holes that are finally visible get sealed. Then new insulation to R-38. Those are not one price.

After the deck is bare

A raised house with living space underneath is a different look from a vented cottage attic. Say which one you have before anyone talks about tearing insulation out. A slab under another unit is the wrong trade.

The install that follows is blown-in insulation in Fort Myers Beach. Contaminated decks are attic sanitizing, a separate page. The contractor, separate from this tear-out, is the insulation contractor in Fort Myers Beach.

Questions

When do you remove insulation in Fort Myers Beach?

Is insulation removal included in a blown-in price?

No. Removal is its own price. A planning range for new fill does not include bagging out the old insulation. Sanitizing, if the fill was contaminated, is a second price. The new blow is a third.

Where is the shop for a Fort Myers Beach removal?

There is no shop in Fort Myers Beach. The crew comes from the Boca Raton shop at 4263 NW 1st Ave, Boca Raton, FL 33431. Call (561) 654-7698.

The attic numbers, not a brochure

The 2023 Florida Building Code, Energy Conservation, Table R402.1.2 sets a climate zone 1 ceiling at R-30 and a climate zone 2 ceiling at R-38. Cardinal installs R-38 and checks the inches. A Florida page that lists R-49 to R-60, or R-3.2 to R-3.8 per inch for both fiberglass and cellulose, is using a different book. Table R402.4.1.1 says air-permeable insulation shall not be used as the air seal.

Quotes are prepared by Russell Y, a building scientist, BPI certified, and certified to perform blower door testing. When the door is run, the result is air changes per hour at 50 pascals, the method in R402.4.1.2. That section limits new houses in climate zones 1 and 2 to 7 ACH50. An insulation job on an existing house is not automatically that test. We report the number only when we measured it.

Insulation numbers Cardinal uses against the Florida code
Item	Number	What it means
Zone 1 ceiling, Florida code	R-30 minimum	Palm Beach and Broward
Zone 2 ceiling, Florida code	R-38 minimum	Not R-49 and not R-60
What Cardinal installs	R-38, depth checked	Above the zone 1 floor
New blown fiberglass	About R-2.5 per inch	Not R-3.2 to R-3.8
Settled fiberglass	About R-2.2 per inch	4 inches is about R-9
New cellulose	About R-3.6 per inch	Denser. Still not an air seal
Open-cell foam	About R-3.6 per inch	A roof-deck product
Closed-cell foam	About R-6.5 per inch	2 inches is about R-13

The attics on this page

Fort Myers Beach is the town on Estero Island, ZIP 33931. It is not the city of Estero on the mainland, and it is not Fort Myers. Cottages with a vented attic are the job. Most of the island is condominiums.

A cottage attic gets sealed and blown to R-38. A condo does not. There is no island shop and no island pin. The Boca shop at 4263 NW 1st Ave is the street address. Call before you expect a truck on the island.

Raised houses with living space under them are a different look from a vented cottage attic. Say which one you have before anyone talks about foam. A slab under another unit is the wrong trade.

The code in Fort Myers Beach

Fort Myers Beach is in Lee County. Table R301.1 lists Lee County as climate zone 1A, the same zone as Palm Beach, not zone 2. The ceiling minimum is R-30. Fort Myers Beach does not publish its own attic number. There is no shop there.

Lee County is not in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone. Section R806.2 of the 2023 Florida Building Code, Residential, sets the net free vent area at 1/150 of the attic. The exception is 1/300 only when 40 to 50 percent of that area is within 3 feet of the ridge and the rest is in the bottom third. Insulation cannot close the soffit. R806.3 requires at least 1 inch at the eave vent.

The county zone is Table R301.1. The Boca Raton worked example, including the vent math, is the building code page. Cardinal still installs a vented attic to R-38 and checks the depth.

Insulation removal in Fort Myers Beach