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insulating old brick house

15 years ago

I have no insulation in my walls.The exterior is brick and I have actual 2x4 walls.The 2x4s have 1x12 planks nailed to them on then on the inside,then there is lathe nailed verticly every foot or so. Nailed to that I have more lathe that the plaster is stuck to.Well i pulled the plaster and lathe off.My question is,do I put foam insulation over the planks,then drywall, or do blow insulation into wall between the planks and the brick.And if so,do I need some kind of vapor barrier. Thanks to all that can help me.

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Comments (5)

fandlil
15 years ago
Although insulation in the walls is very important in cutting down on heat loss, insulating the ceiling of of the heated space is much more important because heat rises. Do you have an attic, and is the floor of the attic insulated? That's where you should start. Make sure your attic insulation is up to current standards. Next make sure you put weather stripping whereever drafts can come in, and that you have either storm windows or EnergyStar rated windows. After you do these things, you may find that you do not need to insulate the walls.
worthy
15 years ago
Since you have already removed the plaster and lathe, the walls will be your number one priority.

First, repair and repoint the masonry wherever needed. Then apply a liquid vapour barrier to the inside of the masonry. Next, recommended insulation includes closed cell polyurethane spray (my favourite), expanded polystyrene board (XPS), or extruded polystyrene (EPS) depending on your target R factor, the space you have to work with or other variables.

Pay special attention to sealing the old window frames to the new insulation, even building new internal frames if necessary.

Your goal is to make the insulation as tight and free from air movement as possible.

Read the up-to-date digest in the link below from one of the leading experts in the field for details.

Once you're done, get to work on the other areas of your home.

Here is a link that might be useful: . Building Science Digest 114
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It is called brick nogging, a pre 1900 "insulation" (really no insulating value). An article about it is attached below. Based on the article attached below, the house would need to be stripped from either the inside or outside, the bricks removed, insulation added and the exterior resided (or interior re-plastered). I would add fireblocks to balloon framing as well, but that is the least of your problems. Here is a link that might be useful: About brick lined walls
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3,2,1. The dormers will drive all of the decisions. New building codes require more insulation now, and you may have to raise the roof plus add the dormers in order to get the required head room and the required R value for the insulation levels. If you've got to completely rebuild the top floor, you'd be wasting money and time doing any other project until that project is done. Even if you can build adequate headroom dormers with the required insulation levels out of what's there, you'd still be wasting effort to insulate what's there without creating the dormers first. And taking down all of that old charming wood will be required to insulate properly. So, you've got to get the addition sorted out first.
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nathan, Settling was indeed a problem with blown in insulation, but that's in years' past. These days we use "dense packing" when blowing into confined framing bays, like wall stud bays, or ceiling rafter bays. If you blew a thickness of cellulose, say 24", it'd be fairly low density, all fluffed up with air. Come back 6 months later and it will have settles in height until it reached it's natural settling density of 2.7 lbs per cubic foot. Come back five years later it'll still be at that settled depth and at that settled density. so we "dense pack" the cells, running a fairly lean mix out fo the blower, and look for about 3.5 pound per cubic foot. The only way to know what you;re getting is by experience. The easiest way for a DIY to gain that experience is to screw together a mock stud bay; a couple of 2x6 studs, a cap and sole plate, and a sheet of ply on each side. Drill a hole in one sheet of ply, insert your hose, and blow in the cells, working the hose out of the cavity as you blow. You can caluculate the volume of the bay, then working with the 3.5 lb/cf density, find out how many pounds of cellulose you need to be stuffing into that bay. Each bag of cellulose weighs a certain amount, to it's fairly easy to figure. Then unscrew the ply off one side of the mocked up bay and see how well your coverage is. Then repeat. Once you get the knack, then you can have at it. It's a sight/sound/feel thing when dense packing, but easy to accomplish. Since your walls are open to the studs, you can use mesh netting on the faces of the studs, then dense pack, then drywall. The mesh netting makes it easy to see that the bays are being properly filled. There are some photos posted in the "spray insulation in attic" thread. SLightly different method as those walls also have furring strips on them. If you were to just hang the poly vapor barrier then blow in the cells, the cells would blow the poly off the wall. Dense packing can even bow out 1/2" drywall on 24" studs. 16" framing is usually okay, upping to 5/8ths inch sheetrock is near bulletproof. You can also wet spray cellulose into open stud bays. The wet cells stick in place due to the water content. But there is a certain amount of operator skill required there so that the minimum amount of water is used, as drying times before being able to hang the sheetrock can be lengthy. Personally I don't wet spray. Mongo
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It looks like concrete block behind the hole in the first picture. This is definitely an outside wall? If it's a real energy loss, you could remove everything and start over with foam board insulation and furring like a basement wall, while locating sources of incoming air and plugging them. You'd need to figure out what to do about keeping electrical items. It may not be cost effective.
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kec01
15 years ago
I'd also refer you to the historic preservation brief on insulation. It specifically addresses insulation needs of all types for old homes.

Here is a link that might be useful: NPS preservation brief - insulation
brickeyee
15 years ago
There is no reason to remove the plaster walls.
Cavities can be filled with blown in cellulose through a pair of holes.
The cellulose is blown into an ~1 inch hole near the bottom of the cavity, and when it starts to escape at a similar hole at the top of the cavity you know it has filled.
If there are fire stops in the wall you treat the stub bay as separate cavities.
worthy
15 years ago
If you haven't pulled off the old plaster and lathe, I would hesitate to blow in moisture sensitive material into a void that could be very damp at times.

Also, consider from the preservation brief linked above:

"A serious problem exists with certain cellulose insulations that use ammonium or aluminum sulfate as a fire retardant, rather than boric acid which causes no problems. The sulfates react with moisture in the air forming sulfuric acid which can cause damage to most metals (including plumbing and wiring), building stones, brick and wood. In one instance, a metal building insulated with cellulose of this type collapsed when the sulfuric acid weakened the structural connections!"

Instead, look to the suggestions in the second post.

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