Insulation Quote Review ($99): A Builder Puts Your Attic, Spray Foam, Basement or Air-Sealing Quotes on One Grid and Tells You Which to Sign

Insulation & Air SealingIndependent review

Insulation Quote Review: A Builder Reads Your Attic, Foam or Basement Quotes Against Your House Before You Sign

Up to three quotes and your photos, on one grid, with a plain answer. No contractor behind it, no commission on who you hire.

Three attic quotes: $2,100, $3,200 and $4,000. One says “insulate attic to R-60”; one lists the bags; one has air sealing, baffles and the hatch as separate lines and the other two do not mention them. One says the rebate is included and does not say whether the company is on the list. Two basement quotes, one for “spray foam basement walls” and one for “3 in. closed cell, 2,950 board feet”, and they are $1,800 apart. You cannot tell which is which from the kitchen table, because the thing being sold disappears under the drywall or the fluff the day it goes in. I can. For $99 the quotes go on the ten-line grid, the area and the existing R get checked against your photos, the blanks get priced, and you get a written answer on which one to sign and what to ask the others.

Reviews are done by a Tarion-registered Ontario builder with 300-plus houses behind him, who has had every one of them insulated, foamed and tested. Turnaround three business days.

What you get

Insulation Quote Review
$99

Up to three quotes, plus your photos. HST added at checkout.

  • Every quote put on the same ten-line grid, side by side
  • The attic or wall area checked against your house, and the existing R-value checked against your ruler photo
  • The product each one actually named: cellulose or fibreglass, closed or open cell, the thickness, the bag count, or “insulation” and nothing else
  • What each one leaves out, in dollars: air sealing, baffles, hatch, pot light covers, removal, masking, the thermal barrier
  • Foam quotes converted to board feet so they compare; batt quotes checked for the vapour barrier and the air barrier
  • The rebate claim checked: the tier, the participating list, the paperwork
  • A plain answer: sign this one, go back to that one with these questions, or walk
Order the quote review
Insulation Takeoff
$249

One house or addition, from your plans. HST added at checkout.

  • Every thermal-envelope surface measured off the drawings: attic, cathedral slopes, above-grade walls, basement walls, rim joists, exposed floors, slab
  • The assembly and the R-value each surface needs under the SB-12 package the house is being built to, with the effective number
  • Quantities by product: bags of blown insulation, batts by size, board feet of foam by surface and thickness, rigid board, poly and tape
  • The air barrier drawn as one line, with the details at the rim, the windows, the ceiling and the service penetrations, and the blower door target
  • ICF walls recognised as insulated: nothing double-counted that the wall already has
  • A budget at October 2026 Ontario rates, by surface and for the house, frame or ICF
  • The scope to send to three contractors so the quotes come back comparable, and the allowance check if there is a builder contract
Order the takeoff

Already have quotes? Read what the review covers.

If your house is in Simcoe County, Muskoka or the Georgian Bay area and the job ends up going to a contractor we introduce, the review fee comes off the introduction. More than three quotes, or whole-house packages with foam, attic and basement from different companies, are quoted separately; email first.

How it works

  1. Order. Pay by card on the Stripe page. HST is added at checkout; you get an emailed receipt and a page telling you exactly what to send.
  2. Send the paper and the pictures. Reply to the receipt email with the quotes as PDFs or clear phone photos, the budget the attic calculator or the foam calculator wrote if you ran one, and the photos: from the hatch, a ruler in the insulation, the rim joist, the basement wall, anything stained or wet.
  3. Get the answer. Within three business days: the grid, the area and R check, the blanks priced, the product and depth check, the board-foot conversion, the rebate check, and the recommendation with the questions to send back.
  4. Use it. Send the questions, get the revised quotes, sign the right one. Most weeks the cheap attic quote comes back $900 higher once the air sealing and the hatch are in, the dear one turns out to include removal nobody needed, and the middle one wins because it was the only one that measured the attic.

What it is not

It is not a site inspection. Nobody crawls your attic for $99; the quotes, the calculator sheet and your photos are what gets read. If the photos show something that needs a person up there first (vermiculite, wet insulation, a bath fan dumping into the attic, knob-and-tube), it says so and says who to call before anyone insulates. It is not a binding price, a specification for the contractor, an energy assessment, or a recommendation of a company. It is a builder’s reading of the paper you already have, which is the thing nobody else will give you.

What gets found, most weeks

  • “R-60” with no existing R, no depth and no bag count, so there is no way to know what arrives in the truck.
  • No air sealing line on two of three attic quotes, on a 1970s house with eight pot lights and a plumbing stack open to the attic.
  • A foam quote with a price and no thickness, beside one that says 2 in. and one that says 3 in., at nearly the same money.
  • Open-cell foam quoted on a basement wall.
  • Fibreglass batts and poly quoted straight against a concrete wall, with no foam and no gap.
  • “Rebate included” from a company that is not on the program’s participating list, which means no rebate.
  • Removal of old insulation priced on an attic that only needed a top-up, and no removal priced on one with mouse droppings in every bay.
  • Nothing about the hatch, the baffles or the bath fan on any of the three.

Before you order, the free version

The ten-line grid is on the site and you can fill it in yourself. The inspection checklist and the rebate page tell you what should be on the quote. If the grid gives you a clear answer, keep the $99. If two quotes are both complete and $1,500 apart and you cannot see why, that is what the review is for.

Questions people ask

Can you review a quote for just the rim joists, or just an attic top-up?

Yes. Any combination of attic, spray foam, batt, basement, crawlspace and air-sealing quotes, up to three documents. A single quote on its own gets the same grid and the questions to send back.

Will you tell me which contractor to use?

I will tell you which quote is the one to sign, and why, and what to ask before you do. I do not recommend companies and I do not take a commission.

What if the insulation is already in and something is wrong?

Send the photos and the invoice. The review tells you whether the depth, the coverage, the foam thickness or the vapour barrier is short of what you paid for, with the product sheet and the code section behind each, which is what you need before you write to anyone. Foam problems; the checklist.

Is the fee refundable?

If I cannot read what you send (illegible photos, a quote with no scope at all), I will say so before starting and refund it. Once the review is written, it is not.

Three pieces of paper, one answer

The grid, the area check and the questions, in three business days, for $99. Then sign the right one.

Order the quote review, $99Back to the section