Blown-in insulation – Winter is a cold time of year and while it is not quite upon us yet it is on it's way. If you live in the more Northern regions of the North American continent you probably spend a great deal of the months from October or November up until spring spending a significant amount of money on keeping your house heated to a fairly comfortable level. With the current energy situation this can become an expensive undertaking especially if your home doesn't have the best insulation.
While it looks very picturesque the image of a house with snow on top and large icicles hanging from the eaves can actually be a sign of a home with poor insulation. What tends to happen is that the heat produced in the house escapes upwards and warms the roof enough to cause some snow atop the house to melt. It can't melt completely since it's cold outdoors but enough melts that it runs down to the eaves and drips from there. That's the point where it refreezes since the reality of the cold winter weather is reasserted once the snow-melt is away from the warm roof. As we noted before, it looks nice but it can be a sign of your money spent on heating fuel almost literally floating away.
To remedy this type of situation you might want to take a look at your home's insulation situation. It might be as simple as opening the attic hatch and tossing a bit of extra insulating material up there. Or you could rent a blower and install additional loose fill attic insulation. Blown-in insulation is also useful in situations where you need to upgrade the insulation in your walls but don't want to do a lot of damage to your walls. It can be installed through a fairly small hole in the wall since it is blown in under pressure. There are a few different types of loose fill insulation on the market so you may want to do some research on what best fits your needs. If you have a contractor do the work they can likely fill you in on what the benefits or disadvantages of each type is likely to be.
It can be surprising the level of improvement you can get from a fairly simple insulation upgrade to your home. If you feel like you are constantly pumping money into a semi-futile effort to keep your house warm in winter check out the status of your home's insulation. You might be able to effect a major improvement!