builder is advising against foam board insulation
badfish22
11 years ago
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virgilcarter
11 years agorenovator8
11 years agoRelated Discussions
Spray Foam Insulation Question
Comments (24)I've found that rooms over garages are very hard to condition. there are a couple of ways to address this, walls shared with attic space are called kneewalls. on one side is living space (conditioned) on the other side attic space (extreme heat/cold). Southface has great info, check page 5 for visual of air sealing these walls. http://www.southface.org/default-interior/Documents/airsealingkeypoints.pdf with these attic rooms surrounded on 6 sides by extreme attic temps there are two ways to address them. one is pictured in link. convnetional insulation in stud bays, foam sheathing, caulked nailed & taped in place from top plate to bottom plate of kneewall. the detail on link also shows how to seal for air movement under floors of these rooms by using foam board, and placing it between floor joists & sealing air tight. I personally like to cut the foam board to fit tightly & air seal with caulk. I see people using great stuff..but am not a fan of the stuff myself. too much expansion to get a good seal, and over time, it shrinks. this is a process that is time consuming & detail oriented. easiest in new construction prior to any insulation being added to attic floor. more cost effective than spray foaming the walls and between floor area. but labor intensive. so its a easy fast process (spray foam) or a longer lower cost higher labor install with foam board. the benefit of creating an unvented semi conditioned attic space works great in my hot humid climate where in the summer attic temps reach 130+ degrees in attics. as we often put our ducts in the attic, the foam creates a less extreme temp for less heat gain. install of foam is crucial. temp mix has to be correct chemical mix has to be correct, temp of area sprayed is a factor. foam has to meet code requirements for your area. if code says R-30 in attic, enough inches of foam to reach that R-value has to be installed. seal has to be complete in an unvented attic. roof connection to attic floor has to be sealed. install should be level, no belly in or out between rafters. faces of rafters should be covered. none of that average fill stuff which means the spray can be less in some areas & more in others so that it 'averages' out to xx inches. low spots & voids will cause problems. testing for leakage, marking leakage sites with spray paint and having foam company spray to seal is the way I do my unvented attics. this all has to be established, in writing prior to any work being done. shop companies carefully. avoid 'average' fills, Kvalues Qvalues. R-values that is what code looks for. there is No exception for spray foam. I'm with Manhatten all the way on spray foam in walls. long payback when a better option is to put foam sheathing on exterior of walls & pay close attention to air sealing details. search southface site for air sealing pdfs..great stuff there! I've never recommended spray foam in walls after running the numbers for my climate & seeing 25+ year paybacks. and I've done these numbers lots of times, not just for one house. (btw hey Manhatten..long time no see) if you chose to use these details of air sealing for the tradeoff for this better insulation is SMALLER hvac system. it only makes sense people if you weight the benefits of upgrades against each other. get a load calc for the house including all types of insulation, window info, air tightness tight not leaky or average & the size needed lessens. bigger is not better, it is just lack of correct education in the trades & misinformatin to the homeowner to sell them more equipment than needed. you don't size the system for the 10 days a year of 50 people in the house & then pay for that the other 355 days. two stage units, variable speed air handlers are great things that vary with the needs of the house as they change. these are good investments. if you are truly interested in making your house efficient, hire an energy rater. specific to you information with inspections, testing & verification. unbiased working for you. resnet.us is a good place to start. new construction, existing homes we do it all. best of uck....See MoreNow a basement spray foam insulation question
Comments (9)Ha! Diaper.. Thanks for that link Worthy. Its a great one for sure. The physics are certainly not the same though. From a strictly building science point of view, insulation is best on the exterior which keeps the dew points high (walls warm) and reduces thermal bridging. It also brings the thermal mass inside the conditioned space which definitely boosts energy performance. From the link; "Exterior insulation best location from physics perspective, has practical problems with protection, thermal bridging and insects." Iam surprised they are taking this newer stance of recommending insulation to Interior. Their main issue is the most surprising to me right now.. Protection: Exterior basement insulation is not exposed very long during the building process and not particularly vulnerable once its up in my opinion. Once its backfilled, what sort of damage will it incur? What am I missing here? Thermal bridging: Ive always thought thermal bridging is usually less and was very surprised to see that one researcher found the brickledge location to be a major issue. If no brickledge, no issue as I see it. Even with a brickledge, a first course of foamglass would be ideal but realize the logistics and possible price increase is questionable. Insects: Tough to argue with this one down south. There are insect resistant foams available. Best practice leaves a gap before wood framing which is a fairly challenging detail to get right in the field and of course this leaves a significant thermal bridge if not accounted for from the Interior. This is another reason I love pre-cast concrete panels for basements because I dont have a choice in the matter, they only come with Insulation on the interior. Still, if pre-cast panels werent available and there was no brickledge I would probably spray foam to the exterior if the price was right and treat for termites which is required anyway. While I dont think the inspection strip would account for nearly the heat loss of a brickledge its probably significant enough to follow BSCs advice if building in termite country which is ever expanding these days....See MoreHow to repair cat scratches in foam board insulation
Comments (20)This is a pretty silly discussion. If your house is in violation of the building code, the building department won't care who did the work. If they take any action at all, you will be ordered to correct it, not the state; the town's authority is over you, not the state. If you want the state to fix it, you will have to ask them directly; if they refuse, you should forget about it and move on. Unless they are unusually stupid, they would have asked you to sign a waiver of responsibility before doing any work on your property; try reading that "receipt" you signed. The discussion of building code requirements is probably irrelevant if this house is in VT. If VT has finally adopted a residential building code I haven't heard about it. Unless this particular town has adopted it's own code I suspect it is perfectly legal to expose polystyrene insulation board in this house. And you thought NH was the Live Free or Die state. "Let's just 'ASSUME', for a moment, that the insulation can be left uncovered" It's ridiculous to assume something is OK that could kill your family (and the cat) before they could get out of the house in a fire. Do you understand what toxic smoke does to you? You canâÂÂt just run through it and cough a bit like Bruce Willis in a movie. "Overcome by smoke" means you can't get to safety on your own. After nearly a hundred people died primarily from toxic smoke from burning exposed polyurethane foam in a night club in Warwick RI in 2003 you would think that foam insulation would get more respect as a killer. My son lived a few miles away and didn't answer his phone so I drove there to see if he had been in the fire so it left an impression on me. The Station nightclub was required by state law to have sprinklers installed when it was converted from a restaurant to a night club but the local building and fire officials issued permits without enforcing that requirement. Despite the negligence of the local officials and the foam supplier, after a long court battle it was the owners of the property and the pyrotechnic equipment who went to prison. Put the safety of your family ahead of energy conservation, academic responsibility debates, or annoying pet behavior while you can....See MoreFoam Board Insulation after framing.. Place it and spray foam edges?
Comments (18)No such machine was used... They poured the entire garage at once which lasted from 8:15am-8:45am.. From that point until 1pm they were working the concrete by hand.. This is a quick shot of what they were doing: I just really can't believe that this company would allow this.. They are a higher end company and they do most of their work in high end neighborhoods.. I am actually getting a little concerned that its not even.. I went over while at work to take a quick pic but got their late and it was already dark.. I left the headlights of my car on and took a pic.. I can't tell if its the lighting combined with the trowel marks, but it almost looks like ripples.. This is what it looks like: At this point I don't know what to even do.. I feel like every time they get to the next stage I have to question what my options are because it wasn't done right.. I know I am not building a mansion or some multi million dollar home, but I just feel like I probably could have done a better job myself and I have absolutely no experience.. I know it's easy to second guess people, but I feel like this is not an acceptable finish.. I talked with a few people and they said there is no real way to "repair" this.. They would have to hammer it all out and pour again.. I had contemplated doing an epoxy finish but I don't even know if that would solve this.. Im sure it would help the finish look, but if this floor is in fact not level I am not sure an epoxy coating will level it out.. I am nervous to even go down to the basement.. I only saw a small portion from the upper level (no stairs installed yet) and everything was covered.. I can only assume the basement slab looks the same.....See MoreCamG
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