New company. Not new to attics.

Why Attic WISE exists

Most people never see the inside of their own attic. Someone climbs the ladder, comes down with a number, and the homeowner signs and hopes that whatever went up there was worth it. That's an odd way to buy something you'll live underneath for decades.

Attic WISE is built around a plainer idea: you should be able to see what you're paying for. That starts with a Bay Area market range before anyone visits, carries on through a free inspection and a written quote, and ends with a clean house. Nothing about it is complicated. It just takes a little more explaining than most companies bother with.

Bay Area houses keep their attics in very different shapes. An Edwardian flat in San Francisco may have a crawl hole in a closet ceiling. A 1950s ranch in San Jose usually has a hatch in the hallway and ducts running across the attic floor. A stucco tract home in Concord bakes under a low roof all summer. The principles are the same in every one; the details never are. That's why we look before we quote.

Measured before it's quoted

The inspection is where a price stops being a guess. What it checks, and where it stops, is in our guide to the free attic inspection.

Order matters, and it's the part most often skipped:

• Air leaks get sealed before new insulation covers them, because once they're buried nobody will find them again. That's air sealing.
• Old, dirty or rodent-damaged insulation comes out, and the attic gets cleaned and sanitized, before anything new goes in. That's insulation removal and attic cleaning and sanitizing, and usually rodent proofing to close the doorways they used.
• Vents and baffles go in so the attic keeps breathing once the floor is filled. That's attic ventilation.
• Then the new insulation goes down to the depth written on your quote, most often as blown-in insulation.

Your quote lists the pieces your attic actually needs, and only those. If an attic needs nothing but a top-up, that's what the quote will say.

Prices you can see first

We don't have a price sheet to publish yet, and we're not going to pretend we do. What you'll see on the cost page and in the estimator is a Bay Area market range: what published Bay Area sources say this kind of work costs, with every source listed. It's there so you walk into the inspection already knowing the ballpark, and so the number on your quote doesn't come as a shock.

The range is not our price. The written quote after your inspection sets the price, and it's the only number you'll ever be asked to sign.

What a new company owes you

Attic WISE is new, so there's no long track record to point at, and we won't invent one. You won't find borrowed praise or made-up counts of finished jobs on this site. What we can offer instead is plain dealing, written down where you can check it:

• Prices shown up front and labeled for exactly what they are.
• A free inspection, or an estimate from photos if you'd rather not have anyone over.
• A written quote before any work starts, and nothing started before you sign.
• A deposit that stays within California's cap, and five business days to change your mind.
• Straight answers when something in your attic is a job for someone else first.

That last one matters more than it sounds. Some things found in older Bay Area attics, like knob-and-tube wiring and vermiculite insulation, have to be dealt with by a specialist before insulation work can go ahead. When we find them, we say so, explain why, and tell you what kind of specialist to call. Our part of the job waits until theirs is done.

Talk first, if you like

If you'd rather talk before booking anything, get in touch by phone, email or the short form. Ask about your attic, a quote you already have, or whether a job is worth doing at all. A good answer is sometimes “not yet,” and we're happy to give it.