Hey this is Ed with AtticFoil.com. I wanted to share some video of Chris Edwards,
the owner of Greenlows Radiant Barrier here in Dallas, Texas. He's one of many professional
installers who install AtticFoil Radiant Barrier Foil. This is a video to show the Open Ridge
Method, or the Staple-Up Method of installing radiant barrier foil. They're gonna install
the radiant barrier foil and then come back with additional attic insulation. This is
an older home, it's a fairly low pitch roof. Probably the biggest challenge is the first
run of foil, just cause it's a little tight down in the eaves. You can see what they're
doing - it's kinda the buddy system where they're pulling the foil - one long piece,
probably 40 feet long. They're gonna staple it to one end and pull it tight. Come along and
staple every rafter. You can go every second or third rafter, if you want. 3 or 4 staples
per rafter is really all you need. Notice he's leaving a little space at the bottom,
that's for ventilation to come up from the Soffits behind the foil. He'll continue stapling
until the first run of foil is done, and as you can see, this 40-foot piece went in in
about 5 minutes - that was about 150 feet. Now it's time to install the second piece
of AtticFoil Radiant Barrier. Notice the vent pipe from the bathroom right there in the
middle of the picture. He's gonna cut around this just using a standard utility knife,
cutting around it and then staple up. If it's a combustable pipe, like a hot water heater
or something like that, you wanna make sure to leave about 6 or 8 inches around any type
of penetration like that. Then he'll continue on staple. You can see the product is very
durable, very strong, virtually tear-proof. Just a few staples per rafter. He's stapling
up as high as he can, he's gonna come back and staple that top area here in a second.
He's overlapping the foil - about an inch, inch or two. He's coming back and stapling
the top part to finish it up. Now the two pieces of the AtticFoil are complete. It's
time to move on to the third piece, and notice how the third piece is not gonna fit completely
between the top of the foil and the bottom of the cross supports. So what he's gonna
do is staple two or three staples, and let that foil hang down a little bit, and kinda
see a flap hanging there. He's just stapling, what he's gonna do is come back here in a second
and we're gonna show you how to cut around those supports in order to achieve the best
and fastest, easiest installation method. Don't over-think this. Just staple and cover
as much as you can, as fast as you can. Here you can see the flap hanging down. What he's
gonna do is what's called the "T-cut," or a cross-cut, take that foil, cut it down and actually
use that support as a cutting board. You can go long and just cut real quickly and then
wrap that foil up. Here's a close-up of the T-cut coming down and then doing a little
cross-cut. This will just make the foil so it wraps around any support really easy. Once
again, it doesn't have to be super tight. You're not trying to make it air-tight, you're
just trying to cover as much as you can, as fast as you can. If you've got a truss-type
system, you can use this. You can knock these out real fast, just use those trusses as
cutting boards either from the top, or the bottom. You can either wrap these supports/cross
supports, like they're doing in this video. Or what you can do is use the cross supports
as a starting point and either work up or down, and just put the foil on top or below,
and do it as this picture illustrates right here. Once you finish installing the bottom
part you want to continue with the top. With the Open-Ridge system you want to leave a
space at the top for the warm air for the attic ventilation to escape. Attic ventilation
is real simple: holes in the bottom, holes in the top. You're gonna leave that slot and
you're gonna cut around any wind turbines or static vents. You wanna leave a path for
air to come in the bottom, flow behind the foil and the roof, all the way to the top.
Hot air is always gonna end up at the top of the attic; you just want to give it an
unobstructed path in order to find its way out. In summary, probably the best advice
for installing AtticFoil Radiant Barrier is to NOT over-think it. Really all you're doing
is stapling the foil to the bottom of the rafters. The heat that would normally come
off the roof and begin to get absorbed by the insulation, you're essentially just bouncing
it back. Also, when you install the radiant barrier, it does not have to be pretty to
be effective. Just keep it simple: staple it up, it's a great do-it-yourself project.
Remember, foil is like shade: it has a cumulative effect. You might have some areas that are
really hard to get to, don't worry about those. Just do the areas that you can get
to as much as you can. For more information and complete instructions, visit AtticFoil.com:
your complete online source for radiant barrier foil. }