How we make money

Most sites in this category do not tell you this. We think a reader deserves to know who is paying before they weigh the advice, so here it is in full.

1. Contractor referral fees

When you submit a quote request, your information is passed to a licensed insulation contractor who serves your area, and we are paid a fee for that introduction. The fee is paid by the contractor or by a lead marketplace, not by you. Using this site costs you nothing and the fee does not change your quote, because we do not set contractor pricing and are not part of your contract.

2. Product affiliate commission

Some pages link to products, such as respirators, equipment rental and materials. If you buy through one of those links we may earn a commission. It costs you nothing extra.

Commission does not decide what we recommend. Where we think the better answer is to buy nothing, or to rent rather than buy, or that a cheaper product is sufficient, that is what the page says.

The conflict, and how we handle it

There is an obvious tension in this model: we earn more when you hire a contractor, and a lot of our content tells readers they do not need to.

We resolve it in the reader's favour, for a practical reason as well as an ethical one. A site that tells everyone to hire someone is worth nothing to a homeowner and gets ignored. The advice on this site is the advice we would give a neighbour, which means:

• Our main removal page opens by telling most readers they do not need removal.
• Our decision guide exists to talk people out of the more expensive option when the cheaper one works.
• The vermiculite page has no quote form at all, because insulation contractors are not asbestos abatement contractors and sending that job into our queue would be wrong for the reader.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your information to unrelated advertisers.
• We do not publish paid placements dressed as editorial recommendations.
• We do not publish reviews or star ratings, because we have no real ones.
• We do not accept payment to change what a page says.

Questions about any of this: [email protected].