Nine years of instruments
The studio, in readings
A tailor measures twice; we measure with a fan, a camera and a moisture meter, and the workroom wall keeps the chalk tally. The figures are the studio’s fitting room — every number below was a house, and every house got its number.
What we do
What the studio fits
Walls, dense-packed to the gauge
Cellulose blown to three and a quarter pounds per cubic foot — gauged, not guessed — inside bays photographed empty and photographed full. R-13 to R-15 added where there was siding and hope, and the thermal-gradient plates in your commission file showing the stripes gone.
Attics & the roofline
The flat air-sealed and dressed to R-60; cathedral bays dense-packed to R-38 with the ventilation channels kept clear and photographed. Skylights, flues and fixtures dressed to real clearances — the tailor’s part, where the difference between a coat and a blanket lives.
Ventilation, balanced & measured
An envelope that holds air needs lungs that work: HRVs commissioned with an airflow report, moisture strategy drawn per house, and the humidity dial landing where the physics said. The studio does not sell tightness without selling breath.
Commissions & rates
The studio card
Prices from last season’s commissions, each one ending in a number the door or the gauge can check. The fitting — the infrared survey with both blower-door readings — is free with any commission and $240 on its own, waived against work within the year.
The fitting — survey & test-in$240, waived
Fan, camera, moisture notes, the plates — free with any commission below
Air sealing commissionfrom $1,520
The holes the plates named, sealed — the running count in the file
Walls, dense-packedfrom $3.35 / sq ft
Per sq ft, density gauged and printed
Attic & roofline to R-60from $2.65 / sq ft
Per sq ft over the flat, bays to R-38, clearances dressed
HRV commissionedfrom $4,250
Balanced, airflow report, humidity strategy drawn
The closing readingincluded
Test-out against the named target — chalk on the wall
How it goes
A commission, fitted to closed
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Week 1
The fitting
The fan, the camera, the moisture meter, and two hours of looking properly. Out comes the commission file: plates, readings, and a scope cut to the house rather than to a package — because a coat is fitted, not sized off a rack.
Week 2
The under-layer
Air sealing — the garment’s lining. Top plates, penetrations, the rim joist at the sill, the hatch; the smoke pencil and the running CFM count, every fix noted in the file as it lands.
Weeks 3–4
The cloth
Dense-pack to the gauge in the walls, R-60 over the flat, bays packed with channels preserved. The bays are photographed empty and full — the studio’s habit and the file’s best pages.
Week 5
The closing reading
Test-out against the target the commission named, HRV balanced if the scope carries one, and the new number chalked on the workroom wall beside six hundred and twelve others.
2025 — 2026, Pember Hollow & the Cartway
The commissions file
Six pages from last season’s files. The full commissions — plates, densities, both readings — are bound per house and a copy goes home with every customer, because a coat you cannot inspect is a coat you cannot trust.
They talked about the coat for ten minutes and then measured the house for an hour — the fan, the camera, a moisture meter along the sills like a doctor with a stethoscope. The commission file arrived cut to our house: seal here, pack there, ventilate because the numbers said so. February came and the coat fits.
The bays were photographed empty and full, the density was printed, and the closing reading went on their wall in chalk while I watched — 1,310 down to 640, same fan. I have hired a lot of trades and this is the first one whose invoice I could check line by line against photographs.
Our 1908 house had "breathe" quoted at us three times as a reason not to seal it. The studio drew the ventilation line first — HRV sized off the test-out target — and closed the envelope second. The windows stopped weeping, the hallway stopped howling, and the hygrometer sits at 42 all winter. The lung came with the coat.
Fair questions
The fitting-room five
The five every consultation reaches by the second fitting. The studio line answers between eight and six, Hollow time, and the workroom wall answers louder.
Why a studio and not a contractor?
Because a contractor sells a package and a studio cuts to measure. The instruments decide the scope — the fan says how leaky, the camera says where, the moisture meter says what the walls can take — and the commission is priced off those readings. It is the difference between buying a coat off a rack and having one fitted, and the difference shows up on the first February bill.
What R-values will my house actually achieve?
Per assembly, in the commission file before you sign: walls typically R-13 to R-15 added, cathedral bays R-38 within the ventilation, the flat attic R-60. The word "achieve" is doing real work there — the closing reading and the printed densities are how you know the number on the invoice became a number in the house.
Is dense-pack messy in an old house?
It is surgical, which is the honest answer: two holes per bay, fill to the gauge, plug and patch the same day, furniture sheeted and the hose living in one window. The empty-and-full photographs are partly quality control and partly proof that nothing was filled that should not have been.
Do I need an HRV if my house is old?
If the closing reading lands tight of healthy — which happens more in old houses than the folklore expects, once the big holes are sealed — then yes, engineered ventilation beats accidental draughts in every measurable way: dry air, controlled humidity, heat recovered instead of lost. The studio computes the line before the scope, so it is never a surprise after one.
What does the chalk wall actually prove?
Six hundred and twelve houses’ worth of accountability: a number per house, in order, in public, inside the shop. Customers walk in, find their line, and point at it — which is the whole relationship the studio exists to have with the work. The wall has never once been repainted.
Fittings booking two weeks out across the Hollow & the Cartway · (555) 028-7745 · studio@envelopeworks.example
Book the fitting
We come with the fan, the camera and the moisture meter, and leave the plates and both readings in a file with your name on it. The commission that follows is cut to the house the instruments describe — never to a package. Evenings suit the Hollow; Saturdays suit the Cartway. studio@envelopeworks.example