The Home Insulators

Insulation Contractors in Morris County, NJ

One home in seven in Morris County burns oil. Fuel oil and kerosene heat 14.5% of occupied units and bottled gas another 3.0%, against 69.4% on utility gas, and that split explains why two houses a mile apart get different advice from us. The median Morris house dates from 1971, the largest cohort is the 1960s and 70s at 29.6% of 198,611 units, and 62.5% of the county predates New Jersey’s first statewide energy subcode of 1 January 1978.

The stock is suburban and owner-held. 65.1% of units are single-family detached, 8.3% attached townhouses or duplex halves, 7.0% in two- to four-family buildings and 10.2% in buildings of 20 or more, and 73.9% of occupied units are owner-occupied. Electricity heats 11.8%, most of it in garden apartments rather than houses. What we are lowering is usually a gas bill or an oil delivery, and the second moves faster.

Morris is three markets. The east, on the floor of the Passaic River valley, is level ground and the densest building: Parsippany-Troy Hills, East Hanover, Montville and the county seat at Morristown. West and north the land rises into the Highlands, where the glacier’s terminal moraine runs from Hackettstown past Budd Lake to Rockaway and Denville, and where the iron country around Dover was mined out a century ago. Threaded through both is lake country — Lake Hopatcong, Budd Lake, Lake Parsippany — where summer colonies became year-round neighborhoods. Thirty-nine municipalities, no large city. The eleven town pages carry the detail.

The Morris County towns we work in

Each page gives the town’s numbers, the assemblies that fail there, and its utilities.

  • Parsippany-Troy Hills — 46.6% built in the 1960s and 70s; splits, bi-levels and ranches on old lake bed.
  • Randolph — 36.1% built in the 1980s and 90s, plus bungalow colonies turned into year-round houses.
  • Montville — 18.1% of units are attached, so the party wall open to the attic is the job.
  • Roxbury — 31.2% on oil and 4.2% on propane: a third of the township is off the gas main.
  • Mount Olive — 17.6% built since 2000, and the gas splits between two companies at Budd Lake.
  • Jefferson Township — 57.2% on oil, and lake cottages turned year-round where the cold comes through the floor.
  • Rockaway Township — the largest township by area, White Meadow Lake to Green Pond; 25.8% built in the 1940s and 50s.
  • Denville — eleven lakes and 16.6% built before 1940: cottages winterized in stages, and the floor under them.
  • Morristown — 22.1% pre-1940, 22.1% since 2000, and only 36.1% owner-occupied: the owner is the whole job.
  • Washington Township — Long Valley and the farm roads: 37.6% from the 1960s and 70s, and 30.8% still on oil.
  • East Hanover — 42.3% built in the 1980s and 90s: full walls, ducts in the attic, nothing air sealed.

The houses across Morris County

The 1960s and 70s built more of Morris than any other era, 29.6% of the county, and what they built was the split-level and the long low ranch. Parsippany is 46.6% from those two decades, Mount Olive 38.9%, Washington Township 37.6%, Roxbury 34.9%, Randolph 33.3% and Montville 31.0%. A split has two attics at different heights with a short wall between them, a bedroom over an unconditioned garage, and loose-fill settled to six or seven inches. Its leaks are the ones nobody sees: open top plates over the interior partitions, the chase around the chimney, bath fans dumping into the attic, and the framed step where the roof changes level. Blow that attic to depth without closing those first and you have paid for insulation and bought a chimney.

Another quarter of the county, 24.5%, went up in the 1980s and 90s, and those houses arrive with their walls already filled. East Hanover is 42.3% from that period, Montville 41.2%, Washington Township 37.6%, Randolph 36.1%, Mount Olive 25.4%. Drilling their walls is not the job and we will say so. The job is the air handler and the ducts run through an unconditioned attic, the cathedral slope over the family room with a paper-faced batt jammed into a 2×10 and no baffle above it, the bonus room over the garage, and an attic hatch that is a hole in the ceiling with plywood over it.

12.0% of the county predates 1940, and two very different houses hide inside that number. One is the village house off a green or a rail station — Morristown is 22.1% pre-1940, Denville 16.6%, Roxbury 11.4% — balloon framed, stud bays open from sill to attic, with pre-1950 wiring to check before anything is blown into a wall. The other is the summer cottage: Lake Hopatcong at Landing and Bertrand Island, Indian Lake and Cedar Lake in Denville, White Meadow Lake in Rockaway Township, Lake Shawnee in Jefferson, Budd Lake in Mount Olive. Winterized in stages, it has a floor over a crawl space or piers with nothing sealing the rim, three or four small attics because every addition brought its own roof, and knee walls behind the upstairs bedrooms. The cold comes up through the floor, and the floor is what we price first.

Oil is a Morris problem in a way it is not east of here. Jefferson Township is 57.2% oil, Roxbury 31.2%, Washington Township 30.8%, Rockaway Township 23.6%, Denville 19.3%, Montville 16.8%, Mount Olive 16.4%, Randolph 16.2%. Two things follow. Oil and propane are bought by the delivery, so a tighter envelope shows up as fewer fill-ups inside one winter, not as a slow drift in a monthly bill. And for rebates an oil house goes through JCP&L, because every gas program in the state requires gas heat.

Morristown is the exception the county has to name. 33.6% of its units sit in buildings of 20 or more and 17.2% in two- to four-family buildings, and just 36.1% of occupied units are owner-occupied. Where a board or a management company owns the roof, the work is a capital plan, not a retrofit we do, and we say that on the phone, not after a visit. What we work on there is the owner-occupied two- and three-family and the pre-1940 frame houses around the Green. The same question governs the garden apartments elsewhere — Parsippany has 19.4% of its units in buildings of 20 or more. Whoever owns the attic decides.

We seal before we insulate

Insulation slows heat moving through a surface. It does nothing about air moving through a gap. Fill a Parsippany split’s attic to full depth, leave the top plates and chimney chase open, and the upstairs is still cold in February.

In the county’s dominant house, the split, the sequence is: seal the top plates over the interior partitions, box the chimney chase, run the bath fans out through the roof or a gable, block the framed step between the two roof levels, seal the garage ceiling and the band joist under the bedroom above it, and only then insulate to depth. In a lake cottage the order starts underneath, at the rim and the floor. In an 1980s colonial it starts at the attic hatch, the air handler platform and the duct boots.

If a quote specifies a depth of insulation and never mentions air sealing, it is half a job.

What insulation costs in Morris County

Most of our projects run between $3,500 and $12,500. In Morris the number moves on how many separate attics a house has — a split or a stepped lake cottage has three or four, a ranch has one — on how many bypasses must be closed before anything is blown, on whether ducts and an air handler in unconditioned space are in the scope, and on whether the crawl space is part of the work. Houses built after 1980 need less, and need it elsewhere.

Open cell foam runs R-3.9 to R-4.2 per inch. Closed cell runs R-6.9 to R-7.1 per inch and also acts as a vapor retarder, which is why it costs more and why it is right in some assemblies and unnecessary in others. All products are manufactured in the United States and meet applicable building code and safety standards. After air sealing and insulating, homeowners typically save 20% or more on heating and cooling.

Insulation rebates in Morris County

JCP&L supplies the electricity to all eleven towns above and to 35 of the county’s 39 municipalities; Butler Electric serves Butler and Kinnelon, Madison Electric serves Madison, and PSE&G serves Lincoln Park. Gas is the split that matters. New Jersey Natural Gas serves Parsippany, Randolph, Montville, Roxbury, Mount Olive, Jefferson Township, Rockaway Township and Denville; PSE&G serves Morristown and East Hanover; Elizabethtown Gas serves Washington Township around Long Valley and the west side of Budd Lake in Mount Olive. Several are partial franchises — PSE&G also supplies about a quarter of Parsippany and pieces of Randolph, Denville and Jefferson — so your bill, not a map, settles it.

A house whose gas and electric come from two different companies can go through either one’s Whole Home program. Start with the utility that bills you for the heat and confirm with the other. The gas programs require gas heat, so an oil, propane or electrically heated house starts with JCP&L.

JCP&L Whole Home Energy Solutions pays up to $7,500 in rebates: $2,000 once the modeled saving reaches five percent, then $200 for every percentage point above that, capped at $7,500 and at half the project cost. It adds 0% on-bill financing of $2,500 to $25,000 — 36, 60 or 84 months up to $10,000, 120 months above that or for income-qualified customers. A contractor participating in the program does the audit and the work, and JCP&L does not publish the audit fee. JCP&L’s Whole Home Energy Assessment is a separate free walk-through for customers who own the home.

New Jersey Natural Gas Whole Home Energy Solutions, run under the SAVEGREEN name, uses the same formula to the same $7,500 ceiling and adds 0% on-bill repayment of up to $25,000 over a term it does not publish; every project must include insulation and air sealing, installed by June 30, 2027, and its Whole Home Energy Assessment is free once a year. PSE&G Whole Home Energy Solutions, for gas customers in Morristown and East Hanover, offers up to $7,500 plus 0% on-bill repayment of up to $25,000 over 7 years, or 10 years above $10,000, through a BPI-certified contractor participating in its program. Elizabethtown Gas Whole Home Energy Solutions runs the same formula to $7,500 with 0% on-bill repayment of $2,500 to $25,000. Both offer a free Whole Home Energy Assessment, and both require gas heat and an active account.

At no cost, JCP&L Home Weatherization for Income-Qualified Customers installs up to $14,000 of efficiency work and $2,500 of health and safety repairs for households between 250% and 400% of the federal poverty guidelines, in one- to four-unit homes at least five years old; the three gas utilities run matching programs, also to $14,000. New Jersey Comfort Partners covers households at or below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines, $82,500 for a family of four in 2026, but refers oil, propane and kerosene homes to the state’s Office of Weatherization — in a county this heavily oil-heated, a great many houses.

The New Jersey IRA Home Energy Rebates have not launched. The state says they are in development and not open for applications, so they are not available. The federal Section 25C tax credit ended for anything placed in service after 31 December 2025; there is no federal insulation credit on a 2026 job, whatever a mailer still promises. The rest is in our New Jersey rebate guide.

Code and climate in Morris County

62.5% of Morris County’s housing went up before 1980, nearly all of it before New Jersey’s first statewide energy subcode of 1 January 1978, so the splits, ranches and lake cottages that make up most of the county were built to no insulation requirement at all. Morris is climate zone 5A, with Bergen, Passaic, Sussex and Warren; Essex and Union, next door, are 4A.

New Jersey adopted the 2024 IECC on 17 August 2026. For new construction it sets R-49 ceilings — the 2021 edition it replaced called for R-60, and a complete permit application filed under the old code is still accepted until about 16 February 2027 — with walls at R-30 in the cavity or R-20 plus R-5 continuous, windows at U-0.28, and air leakage of 3.0 air changes per hour at 50 pascals. R-49 is the number the state considers right for this climate, and it is what we design to.

A house already standing falls under New Jersey’s Rehabilitation Subcode. Insulating an attic does not require bringing the rest of the house to code and does not require a blower-door test. Blown-in or batt insulation installed against the interior finish is ordinary maintenance with no permit; spray foam and other foam plastic insulation need a permit, which we pull as part of the job.

Common questions about insulation in Morris County

Do you install insulation in Morris County, NJ?

Yes, in the eleven towns listed above and the townships around them: the splits and ranches of Parsippany and Randolph, the 1980s and 90s colonials of East Hanover and Montville, the winterized lake cottages around Hopatcong, Denville and Jefferson, the farm-road houses of Long Valley, and the pre-1940 frame houses near the Morristown Green. Apartment and condominium buildings whose roofs belong to a board are not a retrofit we take on.

How much does insulation cost in Morris County?

Most projects run $3,500 to $12,500. What moves the number here is the count of separate attics, because a split-level or a cottage that grew in three additions has several and a ranch has one; the number of bypasses to seal before anything is blown; whether ducts and an air handler sit in unconditioned space; and whether the crawl space is in the scope. Oil-heated houses see the money back fastest.

Are there insulation rebates in Morris County?

Yes. JCP&L Whole Home Energy Solutions pays up to $7,500 toward air sealing and insulation, plus 0% on-bill financing of $2,500 to $25,000, and New Jersey Natural Gas, PSE&G and Elizabethtown Gas run the same $7,500 program on the gas side. All four offer a free Whole Home Energy Assessment. New Jersey Comfort Partners does the work at no cost at or below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines, though oil and propane homes are referred to the state.

Which utility do I have in Morris County?

Electricity is JCP&L in all eleven towns above and in most of the county, with Butler Electric in Butler and Kinnelon, Madison Electric in Madison and PSE&G in Lincoln Park. Gas is New Jersey Natural Gas across the northern and western townships, PSE&G in Morristown, East Hanover and the southeastern boroughs, and Elizabethtown Gas around Long Valley. Several townships are split between two gas companies, so read the bill; a house past the end of the main has no gas utility at all.

Free energy audit in Morris County

We walk every attic a house has, including the low one behind a knee wall and the one over an addition, then the garage ceiling, the band joist and the basement or crawl space. We look for where the ducts run, where the bath fans end, whether the chimney chase is open, and whether a lake-house floor sits over open piers. In a house built after 1980 most of the visit goes to the air handler and the ceiling plane, not the walls. Then a written scope and a price, no charge, no obligation.

Call 914-825-6824 or use the contact form. Open 8am–8pm, seven days. We work out of New Rochelle, NY with a 100-plus in-house crew, and we hold manufacturer installer certifications from the spray foam manufacturers we use.

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