If your Oncor bill crossed $400 last August and your house sits on a slab in Richardson, Garland, Mesquite, or Arlington, your walls are probably working against you. Not because the brick is crumbling. Not because anything looks wrong from the street. Because whoever built your home in 1973 was working off energy cost assumptions that stopped being accurate about forty years ago.

These homes are everywhere in Dallas and Tarrant County. Drive through older Richardson neighborhoods south of Campbell Road, through Garland’s Firewheel corridor, or through the bedroom communities of Hurst, Euless, and Bedford that grew up alongside DFW Airport construction. Low-pitched rooflines, brick veneer on the front, a carport that got enclosed sometime in the 80s, a single-story footprint that made a lot of sense in 1975. They’re sturdy houses. They age well. And a shocking number of them have wall cavities with nothing in them.

What “brick” actually does for your energy bill (not much)

Brick looks permanent. It holds up to hail, weathers North Texas summers without complaint, and gives these homes a solidity that keeps them popular. But brick veneer on a 1970s ranch isn’t a structural wall — it’s a facade. Typically four inches of masonry sitting about an inch in front of a wood-framed wall, with a small air gap between them.

That four inches of brick provides roughly R-0.4 of thermal resistance. A single sheet of half-inch drywall gives you about R-0.5. Your brick exterior is doing almost nothing to keep July heat out of your living room.

What matters is what’s in the wood-framed wall behind it. In homes built before 1980, that’s usually R-11 fiberglass batt — if there’s anything at all. Some 1970s construction in this area used no wall insulation, period. The builder counted on the brick air gap to do thermal work it was never designed to do.

Press your hand against an interior wall on a 103-degree afternoon in Arlington. That wall is warm. That’s your answer.

Start with the attic — every time

Before anyone talks you into drilling through brick or pulling down drywall, the attic is where the real bleeding is.

A typical 1970s ranch in Tarrant or Dallas County was insulated to R-19 when new. Fine for 1975. After fifty years of settlement, air infiltration, and the heat cycling a North Texas attic takes — regularly hitting 140 to 160 degrees in summer — that R-19 has compressed and gapped into something closer to R-10 or R-12 in practice.

Open-cell spray foam on the underside of the roof deck changes the attic from an unconditioned oven into a semi-conditioned space. Your HVAC ducts stop losing conditioned air to a 155-degree environment. The air handler works less. The system lasts longer.

For a 1,500 to 2,000 square foot ranch in Garland or Bedford, a full attic conversion to open-cell spray foam runs roughly $2,800 to $4,500. The range depends on access, whether the old insulation needs to come out first, and roof geometry — hip roofs, which are common on the mid-century ranch style, add surface area and cost.

One question people always ask: can you spray over existing insulation?

Sometimes. If the existing batt is dry and in reasonable shape, some contractors will spray over it. If it’s been through a roof leak, packed with debris, or showing any mold, it has to come out first. Don’t let anyone skip that step.

What’s actually inside these walls

Here’s the typical wall assembly on a 1970s DFW brick ranch, outside to inside:

Brick veneer
Air gap (roughly 1 inch)
Building paper or early housewrap
Plywood or OSB sheathing
Wood stud cavity — 3.5 inches — with R-11 fiberglass batt, or nothing
Drywall

That air gap was designed to let moisture drain, not to insulate. In a significant number of homes built across Mesquite and east Garland in this period, the original builder left the stud cavities empty. The gap and the brick were considered good enough.

An IR camera scan — usually $150 to $300 from an energy auditor — will show you exactly what’s in your walls without opening anything up. In a Texas summer, the hot spots on the scan tell you immediately which cavities have insulation and which are just air.

Your options for wall insulation on a brick veneer home

Drill-and-fill from inside: Holes drilled through drywall into each stud cavity, dense-pack cellulose or injection foam pumped in, holes patched. Works well when there’s nothing blocking the cavity. Cost: roughly $1.50 to $2.50 per square foot of wall area — around $1,800 to $3,500 for a typical 1,400-square-foot ranch.
Spray foam from inside after drywall removal: More invasive. Closed-cell foam gets you to R-6.5 per inch — close to R-21 in a wall cavity that started at R-0 or R-11. The cost for whole-house walls with drywall removal and reinstallation runs $8,000 to $15,000 depending on finish work.
Drill-and-fill through the brick: Less common, but done. Holes go through mortar joints rather than the brick face, preserving appearance. Requires a contractor comfortable with masonry. Usually more expensive than interior access.

For most Richardson and Arlington homeowners, the math points to the attic first, then using an IR scan to decide whether wall insulation is worth it as a second phase. If half the cavities are empty, drill-and-fill is a reasonable follow-up. If the walls are already insulated, air sealing — outlets, switches, penetrations — often gives you more return for less money.

FAQ

Do low-pitch roofs cause any problems with spray foam? A lot of 1970s Garland ranches have almost no attic headroom near the eaves.

The pitch doesn’t prevent it, but it matters for access and for making sure ventilation pathways near the eaves aren’t getting blocked. Open-cell foam still goes on the underside of the roof deck — the crew just has to confirm what they’re working with before they start. A walk-through before any work begins should catch this.

What about Oncor rebates? Are there programs that apply to insulation work in Dallas County or Tarrant County?

There are, though the specifics change. Oncor’s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program has covered insulation upgrades in both counties, and the 30% federal tax credit under the Inflation Reduction Act applies to most spray foam work through at least 2032. Get the current rebate numbers confirmed before signing anything — don’t rely on what a contractor says from memory.

My Mesquite house was built in 1968. Is it too old?

The age isn’t really the question — roof deck condition and wiring are. Most homes in this area were rewired long before now, but spray foam can’t contact knob-and-tube wiring if any survives. Worth an inspection before work starts. If the structure is sound and the roof deck is dry, the age of the house doesn’t matter.

How much will I actually save on cooling bills?

Homes in this area converting from degraded attic batt to spray foam typically see summer cooling bills drop 20 to 35 percent. A $380 August bill coming down to $260 is common. What doesn’t happen is a 60-percent reduction — and if someone quotes you that number, ask them to put it in writing.

DFW Spray Foam: Before and after a 1990s brick home in Richardson (what changes on an Oncor-area bill)

Richardson was one of those places that grew faster than anyone planned for. The neighborhoods off Arapaho Road and Belt Line Road — brick-fronted two-stories and ranch-style homes on quarter-acre lots, trees finally mature enough to give some shade — filled in throughout the late 1980s and into the mid-1990s. If your home is from that era, there is a good chance it has never had its attic air sealed, its ductwork is losing more conditioned air than you realize, and your Oncor bill every July and August is the proof.

This post walks through what a spray foam project on a 1990s brick home in Richardson actually looks like. The scope of work. The problem areas that homes from that decade consistently present. And the kind of bill change you can expect when the work is done correctly. No invented testimonials. No contractor names. Just the physics of a common house type in a climate that demands more from your insulation than any 1993 construction standard anticipated.

The homes built in Richardson's Canyon Creek, Northrich, and Prestonwood Park neighborhoods in the early to mid 1990s were constructed to a code standard that never modeled a July dew point of 73 degrees hitting a house trying to maintain 74 inside. The builders did what was required: blown fiberglass at R-30 in the attic, 2×4 framing with R-11 or R-13 batts in the walls, and a vented attic configuration that was considered standard practice. The houses passed inspection and sold. The thermal envelope was not designed for the Oncor rate environment of 2026.

A complete thermal retrofit on a 2,000 to 2,600 square foot Richardson brick home from this era typically involves two primary areas: the attic and the rim joists. If your home has a pier-and-beam foundation, the crawl space joins the scope. Most homes in the Breckinridge Park and Cottonwood Creek area are slab-on-grade, so the scope compresses to attic and rim.

Crawl space encapsulation (pier-and-beam homes): If your home is in the Richland Terrace or far-north Richardson areas with a pier-and-beam foundation, closed-cell foam at the foundation walls and subfloor is the correct scope. DFW's Blackland Prairie clay moves significantly through the wet-dry cycle, and crawl spaces in that soil see periodic moisture infiltration. A vented crawl space on a pier-and-beam home in Plano or Richardson is contributing to your summer bill and your air quality simultaneously. Full encapsulation on a 1,800 to 2,200 square foot footprint typically runs $5,500 to $8,500.

Oncor is the utility delivery company for most of the DFW metro — Richardson, Plano, Garland, Allen, Frisco, McKinney, Irving, Arlington. You choose your retail electricity provider (TXU, Reliant, Gexa, and dozens of others), but Oncor's delivery charge shows up on everyone's bill. In 2025 and into 2026, the all-in residential rate including Oncor's delivery charge and a mid-tier retail electricity contract runs roughly 13 to 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on your plan and usage tier.

Spray Foam for Older Ranch Homes in Irving and Grand Prairie: Where the Energy Goes

The problem isn't your equipment. In Irving and Grand Prairie's older ranch stock — built mostly between 1960 and 1985 — the problem is the building envelope itself. These homes were designed before energy codes meant anything, before spray foam existed as a consumer product, and before anyone was thinking about Zone 3 summers pushing 108 degrees for two straight weeks. What you have is a house that was never really sealed to begin with.

A two-story house in Las Colinas has a relatively small attic footprint compared to its total conditioned square footage. A single-story ranch in Valley Ranch, Irving or in Dalworth Park over in Grand Prairie does not. The entire living space sits directly under the roofline, which means every square foot of attic floor is also a ceiling radiating heat downward into a room you're actively trying to cool.

For Irving homes along Story Road, Shady Grove Road, and the older sections near MacArthur Park, and for Grand Prairie neighborhoods around Pioneer Parkway and the established streets off Belt Line Road, the attic is almost always the first place to look.

Not every ranch home from this era sits on a slab. Sections of older Irving and Grand Prairie housing stock — particularly homes built in stages or on irregular lots — have partial or full crawl spaces under original sections of the house. These spaces are problematic in ways that don't show up obviously on your utility bill but do show up in floor temperatures, moisture issues, and the health of the structural wood above them.

The exterior walls of a 1970s Irving ranch were typically built with 2×4 framing, which limits the cavity depth to roughly 3.5 inches. Whatever insulation went in at the time — usually fiberglass batt rated around R-11 — has been compressing, settling, and in some cases getting wet and drying repeatedly for fifty years. The effective R-value in many of these walls today is well below what was installed.

The right spray foam scope in an older Irving or Grand Prairie ranch home isn't a whole-house guess. It's a prioritized sequence based on where heat transfer is actually happening in your specific structure. An honest energy assessment, done before any product is installed, should tell you exactly where you fall in that sequence and what the projected payback window looks like for your square footage and your Oncor rate tier.