Attic Blown In Insulation Remove Or Blow More Over It ?

[Abouthadit]

Have had good answers from a alot here on questions/help I've needed.
So thought I would run this by everybody , I've been up in the attic now a few times since we bought this house last July.
It was built in 1980 1175sq ft and had "some" insulation blown in looks like a wool type ?
The rafters/joists appear to be 2x4 and I can see most of the joists through out the attic.
The house had a shake roof , now has a comp roof, but whoever did the removal let a alot of shakes fall through and it is a bit of a mess in the attic !
Not full size shakes but pieces.
Along with being very dusty/dirty.
So should I
1. Crawl around and clean up all the shake pieces that I can get at and blow more insulation on top of the existing .
2. Remove everything ; shake pieces, old insulation , then blow in new insulation.
3. Leave as is and blow in more over the top of what's there ?

The garage is roughly 20x20 (fully finished sheet rock) even tho attached has no insulation at all, the roof pitch between house/garage has little space, so no insulation was ever blown in there. I cut an access hole in the ceiling , climbed up in there and removed the shake pieces, filled up about 10 5gal buckets of it along with tar paper pieces, nails etc too. Went ahead and took a small shop vac up there and vacuumed the 1/4 layer of dust etc.

As always thanks for your advise !

[jadnashua]

Don't think you need to, but I think I'd probably remove the excess debris - the shakes, nails and tarpaper, then blow in more insluation over whatever was left. Maybe a big magnet would help get rid of the nails. Never know when you might need to dig around up there for something (maybe run a new wire, or who knows what), and an old rusty nail is not something you want to find, nor a piece of wood with one sticking out of it.

[Abouthadit]

Thanks for the reply.
Had a local insulation outfit stop by earlier today. He looked in the attic over the garage, recommended to just put a fan at the gable vent to help with getting the heat out for the summer months.
We went inside the house and he looked around up in the attic and said it was the old woolrock something like that ? blown in insulation at roughly 4 inch thick.
His thoughts were for bang for the buck would to just do a radiant barrier layer over the existing blown in now.

OR
They would come in remove the all existing insulation , seal up everything, blow in new insulation witch would be recyclefiber ? fiberglass to R38 and put the radiant sheeting over the top of that for $1650.00.

Or
They could just remove all the existing insulation for $400 and I could do the rest.

I was up there this morning crawling around picking up pieces of shakes, tar paper etc and barely covered 1/4 of the attic and filled up 8 buckets..
Man I can't believe how dusty dirty it is up there !

So any comments, suggestions or should I just keep filling up buckets then blow more in on top of what's there like jadnashua recs

[michielsemma]

Fiberglass is hell on anyone working up there... cellulose isnt.

Blown in will be cheapest. R-34 will be sufficient, unless the add for R-39
is cheap and it should be..the truck is already there, so it should just be
a materials issue.