When we bought our townhouse last fall we were concerned that it doesn’t have central a/c despite the weather here being markedly warmer than in the city, where virtually no one has a/c. Ultimately we decided to get a portable a/c unit for my office since that room faces southwest and gets pretty warm in the afternoon. It cools off enough here at night that sleeping has been fine and it’s usually several degrees below 70 inside in the morning just from opening windows and putting box fans in all 3 bedroom windows to bring in the cool air overnight. Then I close everything in the morning and it gets to the low 70’s downstairs and the high 70’s upstairs with no a/c. (For example yesterday it got up to 90 outside and 77 in the office by 5:00 when I stopped working, today it’s only 82 outside and 73 in the office at 4:00, no a/c either day). We can live with that so we’ll probably forgo the ongoing cost that a/c would cause, at least for now.
But I would like to reduce the need for a/c in the office to just the hottest days, those that get over 95 really. Since this place was built in the 70’s the insulation is old and was undoubtedly mediocre to begin with. The problem is that the entire upstairs except for an attic space over the master closet and hall bath has the ceiling attached to the rafters of the roof. Even the attic area has the ceiling drywalled with only a small gap in a narrow section.
My question is how difficult it will be to take out the old batt insulation and replace it with more effective insulation. Will an insulation contractor be able to pull out a relatively small part of the attic ceiling drywall and do the work, or will they need to pull out a lot of the ceiling. Also, similarly, how destructive is it to have insulation put in on the wall of the office and 3rd bedroom that faces the southwest.
I like the idea of a onetime expense rather than using an energy hogging technology to stay comfortable but dread the mess/expense of the insulation people having to rip out drywall all over our upstairs. Especially after we spent money up front to have the awful popcorn ceilings removed and the entire upstairs repainted just nine months ago.