Insulation the Miracle product

Jerry’s Blog for Feb 23 This month I’m going to hit on insulation. As they are forecasting 0 degrees next week, it’s a good time to talk about it. We just insulated a project with close cell foam. The next week it snowed and Dana took a picture of the roof. I’ll post the picture with this blog as its evident how good foam is to hold temperature. You can see where each 2x6 rafter is. This shows 3” of foam is better than 5” of wood to resist heat change. I’m a big fan of insulation, it cost to install it, but it will keep giving back savings for years to come. As we work in old homes occasionally we open many walls that have 2” of rock wool insulation. In the old days the builders didn’t worry about heat lose as oil was cheap (apparently). Today the building code dictates how much insulation we have to use. There are so many different types of insulation today; you need to be a full time insulator to be an expert on it. In the old days houses were so drafty they didn’t have much trouble with moisture. Today we need to be careful as a poorly insulated job may cause extensive moisture damage. A friend of mine built a 24’x24’ shop in his back yard. He installed a block foundation wall and over laid that with TGI’s (wood Ibeams). To keep the floor warm he left out foundation vents to crawl space. This saved him the money he would have spent insulating the floor. Five years later he noticed his floor seamed spongy. Upon inspection he found all the TJIs were rotted away and the entire floor system had to be replaced. He now has a vented foundation and insulated floor this has solved any future problems. I’m a big fan of ICF (insulated concrete foam) foundations. We build the concrete foundation with foam blocks and fill that will concrete. Now our foundation is insulated to R20. We then insulate the wood box of the floor system with R19 fiberglass. Now that I have the perimeter insulated we don’t have to insulate the floor. To avoid my friend’s dilemma we use the house heating system to condition the space, just like a basement. I’m a big fan of this method as in the last 30 years I haven’t had any rotted crawl spaces. Well, stay warm, Jerry