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.

Carpenter ants do not digest wood like termites, but excavate galleries to nest in. The frass they produce looks like tiny shards of wood, not exactly sawdust, but very similar. You would likely need a magnifier (at least) to see what it actually is. You should inspect above the ceiling, and even consider removing some of the ceiling if required to gain access.

D-man, I saw your similar post on jlc as well and thought I'd offer some info as we are in similar area (Norfolk, VA). First off, if you haven't already, you may want to try looking into buildingscience.com. They have some very detailed info on wall configurations. They also have some fairly good info on crawlspaces esp in regards to conditioned crawlspaces. I noticed alot of guys on jlc pointed you toward 2-4 inches of polyiso foam on the exterior. I am no expert, but don't think for your area (which i believe is considered a mixed climate) this is advisable as the polyiso is considered a vapor barrier. Rather, I think standard rigid foam would be a better approach. Obviously, as you add to the depth/thickness of your exterior walls, you'll have to pay special attention to flashing at your openings. I also agree that blown in cellulose is probably your best bet. My husband and I did the blown in cellulose, and certainly found it to be an easy (tho messy) diy job. Also, if I may, I would encourage you to look into Nichiha fiber cement. We, too, are redoing the exterior of an older home (1930s dutch colonial). While we initially had chosen Hardie, we learned about Nichiha first on this forum. They offer both smooth and shake panels which are a decent amount thicker than hardie which make the boards look moren historically intune with the old time claps. I know some purest will disagree, but if you are going the fiber cement route, Nichiha is worth a look. In our area, it prices out almost the same as hardie. Good luck!

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.