Insulation?

[Andrew Longman]

I put an addition on my house. The house is on a hillside and includes living space above and a heated walkout basement below. The living space is supported by engineered wood beams, 12" on center. The living space is heated my hot water radiant heat under hardwood floor.

I'm pretty confident that the efficiency of the radiant heat would improve greatly with insulation below it. Anybody have a clue about what I should insulate it with and to what R factor?

Smallest fiberglass insulation I've found is 15" which would have to be either trimmed (wasting material and a lot more work) or stuffed in the 11' space between beams.

[Methanolandbrats]

I'd nail fire retardant foam panels to the joists and then have someone blow glass into the space between the floor and the foam panels. Easy and quick.

[Gnam]

What about that spray-in foam that expands to fill any space? You'd still have to trim it flush though.

[sadams]

I assume the radiant is installed in aluminum track which will reflect the heat upwards. If so just get a good insulation contractor to spray in icynene foam insulation. Best stuff ever. If I had the $ I would have sprayed my whole house.

I have a bonus room over the garage and the trusses where sprayed. The frost stays on the roof where it's sprayed and other areas are melted. Stop air infiltration as well.

[cameraman]

Insulation contractors are pond scum.


I have an 1885 vintage two story victorian house. Needless to say nothing about it is standard dimension or even close to any known building code. I just finished putting in new furnaces, one in the attic and one in the basement along with the first sealed ductwork & proper vents that the house has ever had. To do that I had to unload the attic of 120 years of coal soot, rock wool insulation, cedar shingle shards and birds nests. Fun stuff. After it was all emptied out the various folks went to work. Three weeks and $30,000 later the masons, electricians, plumbers, framers, fence installers:rolleyes: and hvac guys are done.:saywhat: So now all I need to do is get an insulation contractor to come in and install some baffles around the perimeter of the attic and blow in some insulation as there is exactly zero insulation up there right now. None of the insulation companies around here will take the job. The roof rafters and ceiling joists are installed at a relatively random spacing so baffles to keep the insulation off the soffits need to be custom fitted. That is time consuming but I'll pay for it. Well I would pay for it if any of the insulation contractors would do the job. They won't. It is too much work and their guys don't know how to do it blah blah blah. Okay so what if I go up there (or hire a carpenter to go up there) and install the baffles, then will they come in and just blow it in? No, they won't even do that, because it would still be easier to work on modern houses and they don't want to work on old construction. So they won't even bid on the job. None of them. How about just doing it on a time & materials bid? Nope, it is too much work. WTF? It is a 12/12 pitch roof over an attic with a nice new staircase for access and nice bright new lighting & power outlets that I had to install to pass inspection. Nope, sorry we aren't interested. ******* lazy bastards.

You know that these are the same people who are complaining about how the economy is down and they aren't making any money:flame:


I know that I can go to Home Depot and buy the insulation and use their blower to install it but I would rather hire someone. I guess not.

[nrc]

It is a 12/12 pitch roof over an attic with a nice new staircase for access and nice bright new lighting & power outlets that I had to install to pass inspection. Nope, sorry we aren't interested. ******* lazy bastards.

You know that these are the same people who are complaining about how the economy is down and they aren't making any money:flame:
[/blog]

I know that I can go to Home Depot and buy the insulation and use their blower to install it but I would rather hire someone. I guess not.

Do I detect a re-occurring theme here? When did it become so hard to find people who will work for their money? For our part we've given up on getting a return call from a fencing company. We're going to pass on begging people to take our money and take a shot at replacing the posts ourselves.

[nrc]

On the topic of insulation - spray in foam would be a real mess if you have to do any work in there later on down the road.

How much insulation are you looking for? If you could use thinner, high density foam it might not be too bad to trim it as needed.

[dando]

Do I detect a re-occurring theme here? When did it become so hard to find people who will work for their money? For our part we've given up on getting a return call from a fencing company. We're going to pass on begging people to take our money and take a shot at replacing the posts ourselves.

It's been like that forever. There's a reason Angie's List exists, yo. Contractors are notoriously unreliable. I called three different contractors to cut some granite for a new cooktop. The one that finally followed through on the job (a Chinese family) came from a referral from a basement contractor we used to finish the basement (Buckeye Basements if you ever have the need, BTW). We had similar luck with irrigation repairs. :irked: Some just won't bother if the job isn't big enough, some could care less, and others are either disorganized or just plain dumb. *shrugs*

-Kevin

[TravelGal]

lurching into Cameraman's blog........aren't there house restoration companies that would handle your stuff? National Trust for Historic Preservation stuff? Or do they shun doing any modern work? Maybe you could tell the company not to tell the Trust about it. ;)

[Andrew Longman]

I assume the radiant is installed in aluminum track which will reflect the heat upwards. If so just get a good insulation contractor to spray in icynene foam insulation. Best stuff ever. If I had the $ I would have sprayed my whole house.

I have a bonus room over the garage and the trusses where sprayed. The frost stays on the roof where it's sprayed and other areas are melted. Stop air infiltration as well.

Correct, but I know not all the heat goes upward.

Can they spray open trusses without if all falling south before it sets?

I eventually want to put a suspended ceiling in the basement if that matters.

The space is quite big. Maybe 30x40

[oddlycalm]

It's been like that forever. There's a reason Angie's List exists, yo.
True, we use Angie's list a lot. It's a hassle to sit down and do a bunch of reviews, but I manage to force myself. We've definitely noticed contractors want to avoid getting a bad rating on AL. BTW, not showing up to bid is grounds for a bad rating.

For people that are willing (or forced) to do the work themselves UltraTouch insulation (http://www.bondedlogic.com/index-1.htm) is a great way to go. No fiberglass dust, no formaldehyde out gassing. Your kids can help install the stuff because it's 100% cotton, mostly from shredded blue jeans. We had a contractor put it in some R30 bats, but I'm guessing there are a lot of places contractors won't know what it is.

BTW, it's pale blue from the denim so you can tell it apart from the stuff made out of ground up puppies and kittens....:p

oc

[cameraman]

What does it cost? It looks to be far neater than blown in, especially there will be traffic thru the attic.

[sadams]

Correct, but I know not all the heat goes upward.

Can they spray open trusses without if all falling south before it sets?

I eventually want to put a suspended ceiling in the basement if that matters.

The space is quite big. Maybe 30x40

Yeah not all the heat goes up. My heating contractor had me install that foil bubble wrap insulation foil sideup to force the radiant into my 2nd floor.

As far as spraying the trusses. Yup sprayed it right on the underside of the sheathing. It expanded,set and they shaved it flush with the truss top plates. I does leave a bit of a mess behind. Also working in there after is not going to happen, it's filled solid. My room is 14X24 and I think it was about twice the cost of batt insulation on a square foot basis.

As I said above, I would have done the whole house if I had the $'s and known heating oil was going north of $5 a gallon.:yuck:

[High Sided]

Smallest fiberglass insulation I've found is 15" which would have to be either trimmed (wasting material and a lot more work) or stuffed in the 11' space between beams.


i would think stuffing an extra 4" wouldn't be much more work if any once you got going and could create a higher r rating, also it should hold itself up better. my 2 cents ;)

[oddlycalm]

What does it cost? It looks to be far neater than blown in, especially there will be traffic thru the attic.
Depends on what R value you want. The prices I have are the installed price which is around $2/sq ft, or roughly twice what fiberglass blow in would be. There's a bit of a premium on the 8" thick R30 product so we went with two layers of R19 the top layer going the opposite direction with the bats butted tightly together. That gives us an R38 which is fine for our mild climate, and we can still access the attic if necessary to do work without having to blow in more insulation afterward. In the small crawlspace under the kitchen we just went with the R30 material. The contractor used a vacuum truck to suck out the old matted fiberglass insulation that had been in that attic. The whole job took three guys around 4hrs. They used little battery operated saws to cut the bats.

oc

[cameraman]

Holy schnikes, an R-57 attic load of cotton makes for a really big pile.

[eiregosod]

mmmm lagging jackets