Insulation Reviews

You cannot answer a phone in a respirator, in a suit, on your belly in an attic that is cooking you slow. I have tried. What actually happens is the homeowner with the bedroom that will not cool down calls three companies, books the first human voice, and I climb down an hour later to a voicemail that starts with the words "never mind." That was my business for years. I was the lead man, the quote man, and the missed call all in one sweaty package. Launchbarr put a Voice AI on our phone and I expected to hate it. Then a lady a few towns over left a review saying the girl who took her call asked smart questions, which rooms ran hot, whether the AC ran all day, and got her inspection booked for Thursday. I read that review sitting in my truck eating gas station peanuts. That girl asked better questions than I ask when I am tired, and I ask them for a living. I still do the attic. I still come down looking like a ghost made of dust. But the calls are answered by somebody patient while I am up there, and Brian is a lot easier to be married to when he is not replaying voicemails at the supper table. My wife's words, not mine. She is right often enough that I have stopped arguing the point.

My wife Lori owns our insulation company, and I mean owns it. She does the books, the schedule, and the measuring. I run a spray rig for her company. Lori measures an attic like it is a crime scene, then writes quotes at our table till 10, worrying that a cheap crew will spray it thin for half her number and the homeowner will never know. The work disappears when the hatch closes. That is what eats at her. Our Google profile has our real jobs on it now, and a review says our crew sealed every penetration, laid depth markers, and left the man's garage cleaner than they found it. Lori read that one at breakfast. Now callers ask about depth and sealing instead of just price per square foot. She still writes quotes at the table. She eats at it first most nights, which is new. I do the spraying, so take the garage man's word over mine.

A crew from two states away quoted a barn job over the phone, sight unseen, for money I cannot buy material for. Used to be that was the end of my week, just stewing on it. Our site has close up photos now. Foam depth, the gauge in the foam, me in the suit doing the work. A rancher down the road compared those pictures to the other guy's nothing and told me, "Pete, I can see what I am buying from you." Nobody had ever said that about insulation. Booked it right there.

I am the son, which in a family insulation company means I am the one who gets handed the phone, the paperwork, and every job my dad does not want, which is most of the paperwork and all of the phone. Dad is 61. He bought a second truck four years ago and could not hire a soul to put in it, so he worked himself half to death instead and came home every night in January smelling like a crawl space, returning calls from the couch at 9 o clock that should have been answered at noon. The cold snap this past January was the first real test of the Voice AI Launchbarr set up for us. Calls came in all evening, frozen pipes next door, bedrooms at 55 degrees, and every one of them got a person sounding answer and a booked inspection instead of Dad's voicemail and Dad's temper. A woman across town told me her husband swore he had talked to our new office manager. We have never had an office manager. We have a dog named Pickle who is afraid of the attic hatch. Dad still says he will believe it when it learns to run a hose. But he eats supper at supper time now, and last week he fell asleep in his chair before the calls were even done coming in. Eli has waited about twenty years to see that.

I have been insulating houses around here for seventeen years and I still measure an attic like the homeowner is going to climb up after me and check. Most do not. That is the whole problem with this trade. Once the hatch closes, nobody can see whether you sealed the top plates or just blew it deep over the mess and left. Launchbarr put a voice on our phones that answers while I am in a suit with a hose over my shoulder. A lady the next town over told her sister, who told me, that the girl who answered asked which rooms ran cold and whether the furnace ever shut off, then booked the inspection for the next morning. I was in an attic two towns away when that call came in. Never heard it ring. She booked three inspections that week off calls I would have missed standing up. I told my lead man, if she ever learns to run a hose I am out of a job. He said she can have the attic in July. I agreed with him before he finished the sentence.

My husband Greg has insulated houses on the hill here in Minnesota for twenty years and he has never once asked a customer for a review. Says if the work is good it should speak for itself. The work was not speaking. It was sitting in warm houses nobody heard about. Launchbarr started sending the ask out on its own after every job. Greg found out when a customer across the river stopped him at the gas station and said the text reminded him, so he left one about his ice dams being gone. Greg came home and said, well, apparently I do ask now.

I started this company out of a rented rig and a pickup that leaked oil everywhere. Our website had a picture of a house I have never worked on. Launchbarr rebuilt it with our real jobs, my crew in suits, foam going up in a barndominium outside town. A builder called and said he picked us because he could see the work before he called.

Marco and I are partners, not related, which surprises people. He runs the rigs, I run the estimates, and for years the estimates I wrote on paper in a cold house went into a folder in my truck and some of them just died there. A homeowner across town would say yes in March, I would mean to call in April, and by May a blow and go crew had done it thin for less. Launchbarr follows up on the dead ones by itself until the person answers one way or the other. A lady the next town over answered in June about an attic I quoted in February. She said the texts were polite and she had just been waiting on her tax return. We sealed and blew that attic the next week. Marco says the folder in my truck retired before I did.

When a call comes in while I am on a job, I am not ignoring anybody. I am belly down in a crawlspace across the county with a headlamp dying, or I am coming out of an attic looking like I lost a fight with a dust storm. Launchbarr texts them back the second I miss the call. Not an hour later, that second. A man two towns over told me he was halfway through dialing another company when the text landed, and he figured a shop that answers that fast probably shows up on time too. We insulated over his garage the following Tuesday.

I am Lars's son. Dad can read a house from the driveway, but our Google profile had the wrong phone number for two winters and a photo of a truck we sold in 2019. Launchbarr fixed it up, every service listed. Calls started coming off the map from people with cold bedrooms across the river. Dad says the map finally knows where we live.

I am a perfectionist about air sealing and a disaster about everything made of paper. Rebate forms, utility program sheets, the proof of depth paperwork, all of it used to ride around in my passenger seat until somebody called mad. The estimates go out fast now, by text, while I am still standing in the driveway with the hatch photos on my phone. She got her paperwork the same day this time. Her sister the next town over booked the next week. Paper still hates me. It just does not get the chance anymore.

I run the office at our shop, which means I am the voice people hear before they ever meet one of us. For years I kept the schedule in a spiral notebook and prayed nobody spilled coffee on January. Launchbarr put every lead and every job on one board where I can see it. Last Tuesday I moved a crawlspace job, a foam job, and two inspections around a sick installer without one phone call to the owner. He found out at lunch.

I own this company and I still do the blower door tests myself because I do not trust anybody else to be as picky as I am. A homeowner the next town over had a nursery that would not stay warm and two other companies had quoted her more insulation without ever looking for the leaks. We sealed the rim joists, the can lights, the whole list, then blew it to depth. The part I did not expect was the payment side. Launchbarr sends the invoice as a link and she paid the deposit from her phone before we rolled a truck, then the balance the day we finished.

Luis and I started this company as partners seven years ago, two installers with one rig and a trailer that had a personality. He is the best foam man in Arizona and the worst man in Arizona at putting a job on social media. He takes a photo, looks at it, deletes it, and says nobody wants to see foam. Meanwhile a homeowner the next town over is standing in a garage that hits a hundred and ten degrees wondering who can fix it, and she has never heard our name because Luis deleted the evidence. Launchbarr takes the finished job photos and posts them without Luis touching anything. A woman across town called and said she had watched three of our garage jobs go up on her phone over two weeks and figured anybody posting that much real work in her neighborhood was probably not going anywhere. We foamed her garage and the room over it. Luis still deletes his own photos. He cannot delete the ones the office sends in. He asked me last week if the posts could at least skip the one where his suit was ripped. I told him that one got us two calls.

I am 58 and I have sprayed foam in Oklahoma heat that would test a preacher, so a computer did not scare me. My daughter said my system was a flip phone and a prayer. A rancher outside town messaged about foaming his shop at 9 at night, answered the questions, and I woke up to a booked measure. The prayer got faster.

My wife Betsy runs our insulation company and she was making every reminder call herself. Homeowners still forgot, gates stayed locked, one dog had opinions. The reminders and on my way texts go out on their own now. A lady the next town over texted back, dogs are in, gate is open. Betsy said, I have been replaced by a text and I love her.

I am Roberto's son. Dad started our company with a machine he rebuilt himself and a rule that we never leave an attic dirtier than we found it. Every call, text, and website message lands in one place now, so an elbow cannot erase a customer. A grandmother across town told me she messaged us on Facebook at midnight about her grandson's room and had an inspection booked before her coffee the next morning. Dad still checks the whiteboard first. It is mostly a grocery list now.

I am not a salesman. I climb up, I take the photos, I show the homeowner where the air is leaking, and then I used to go quiet because I did not know what to say next without sounding pushy. Launchbarr ran a campaign to our past customers during a slow stretch in February, folks whose attics we had done years back. Six of them booked crawlspace work I did not know they needed. One man the next town over said, Glen, you did my attic in 2019, why did nobody ever ask about under my house. I did not have a good answer. Now somebody asks.

I answer the phones and run the schedule at our shop, and January here is when everybody's upstairs turns into a meat locker and the phone goes crazy. Some of those people were found in March. Launchbarr keeps a list that tells me who to follow up with and when, and it does not fall behind furniture. This January I worked that list every morning with my coffee and we booked inspections off calls from November that old me would have lost under a desk. The owner asked what changed. I said the sticky notes retired and nobody attended the funeral.

My husband Frank has insulated Maine houses for twenty two years and he guards his calendar like it is a Bible nobody else may touch. Folks book themselves on the online calendar now and pick a morning. A man across the county booked at 10 at night and wrote, ice on the north side again. Frank saw it with his coffee and smiled like payday.

I tell customers the truth when it costs me the job. Homeowners would book a job, forget us for three weeks, and be at work with the house locked when my crew rolled up. The reminders and on my way texts go out by themselves now. A teacher the next town over texted back, cat is put up, car is moved. Houses are ready now.

Peter and I are partners. He came up through foam, I came up through weatherization programs, and we argue about baffles the way other men argue about football. Our winters here sell insulation for us, but only if people can find the door. Peter put the codes from Launchbarr on the trucks and the yard signs, the ones a customer scans with a phone. A homeowner up the road told us she scanned the sign in her neighbor's yard while walking her dog and booked an inspection from the sidewalk, reviews and all right there. Peter said the yard sign outsells him now. He is only half joking.

I keep everything. Every estimate I ever wrote is in a box in my office, some going back nine years. Launchbarr took that old list of unsold estimates and worked it, politely, months after I had given up on all of them. A man the next town over answered about a crawlspace I quoted in 2022. He said, Scott, your price finally beat doing nothing. We did his crawlspace and his rim joists.

Our town in July is an attic man's idea of a warning from God. I am Paula, I own this company, and I have come down a ladder with my shirt stuck to me and my phone showing four missed calls from numbers I did not know, every one of them a homeowner whose AC had been running since May and whose bill just scared them straight. The messages are handled now, texts and website both, asking the right questions while I am still up there sweating through my sleeves. Which rooms, how old is the house, does the unit ever shut off. By the time I climb down there is a conversation waiting with the answers in it, and twice this summer that conversation was already an inspection on the calendar. A lady across the bay said she assumed I had hired a sharp girl for the office. I told her the office is a truck and a ladder and she laughed like I was kidding. I let her keep believing it. The work books the same either way.