Is this normal or was I ripped off?

[dan fisher]

Had blown in cellulose insulation installed in my attic about 18 months ago and the company said they brought it up to R 38 which is code for my area. cost me about $2,200 for roughly 1,200 square feet of attic space. Anyway, I was up there last week running ethernet cable and noticed the insulation looks way thinner than I remember from right after installation. In some spots I can see the tops of the ceiling joists poking through. I measured the depth in a few places and it's only about 8 to 9 inches when I'm pretty sure it was more like 11 to 12 inches originally.
Is this normal settling or did the company not put in enough to begin with? I'm kicking myself for not taking detailed photos or measurements when they finished, they gave me some paperwork but it just says R 38 cellulose installed without specifying depth or anything useful, Really wish I'd researched this more carefully before hiring them. Any advice on what's reasonable to expect or how to address this would be helpful

 

[thec00l bill]

sorry, but I think you might have been ripped off. seems like the company may not have installed enough insulation to begin with, or the settling was excessive due to improper installation.
For R38, you should have 11 to 14 inches of blown in cellulose insulation. Your 8 to 9 inches of insulation isn't sufficient to achieve an R38 rating

 

[thelinteam]

Probably they installed at low density to hit 12 inches quickly, then it compacted down to where it should've been. Do you have any paperwork that lists the pounds per square foot installed, I think that's what mainly matters and if they didn't document that, then its not right at al