Before anything else, find out what is actually up there. Depth measured at the joist, away from the hatch and the eaves. Everything else on this list depends on the answer, and the answer also sets your rebate tier. It takes half an hour and costs nothing.
Top plates, plumbing stacks, wiring penetrations, bath fan housings, chimney chases, and the hatch. This is the cheapest heat you will stop losing all winter and it is almost never quoted on its own. If you do nothing else on this list, do the hatch.
If the eaves are packed with insulation and the soffit vents are blocked, adding more depth makes the moisture problem worse, not better. Baffles first. This is the step that separates a job that lasts thirty years from one that grows mould in three.
In that order, and not before the two steps above. The rebate pays up to $1,250 with no energy assessment, set by the depth measured before we start.
The band of framing where the floor structure sits on the foundation wall, all the way round the basement. It is a large, continuous, usually uninsulated air leak at the coldest junction in the house, and almost nobody looks at it. Closed-cell foam here is one of the best value measures in an Ontario house.
Empty joist bays open to outdoor air. More here.
Windows. Replacing windows for energy reasons alone rarely pays back within a reasonable period, and the rebate pays $100 an opening. Replace them when they have failed, not as an energy measure.
Anything past R–50 in the attic. Diminishing returns arrive early. Put the money into the rim joist instead.
It is not the programme. No closing date is published for it, whatever you have read. It is that autumn is when every insulation contractor in Ontario fills up, because autumn is when the heating comes on and everybody remembers the attic in the same fortnight. The rebate will probably still be there in January. The date will not.
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Book an attic check
You get the depth, the tier, the dollar figure and the photographs, whether or not you go ahead with us.
