1/8/14 3:42 PM

we just contracted with a local firm to get this retrofitted: pre-expanded injected "tri-polymer" foam. it's pretty cool, they drill holes in the mortar lines between the brick and shoot the stuff in there to fill in all of the inter-stud wall space. it actually shoves and compacts any existing insulation so retrofits are do-able.

our brick walls have +45 year old fiberglas insulation, which i guesstimate has a remaining insulation value of sub-R5 on a good day -- it's pitiful! now we're doing the exterior walls with this stuff. checked out about a half-dozen contractors and found the one we're happiest with. i'm hopeful this still will make a difference!

also, over the holidays i spent some time DIY sealing all of the rim-joists around the foundation with expanding foam, which made a HUGE difference in the comfort of of our living room and dining room and basement. MASSIVE. it feels as if we'd closed a couple windows that were left open.

Last edited by walter on 1/8/14 9:16 PM; edited 1 time in total

1/8/14 4:13 PM

How old is your house?

I thought windows were the biggest component of heat loss...

Sandiway

1/8/14 4:26 PM

windows, and attic sheetrock cuts for ceiling lights. Flush Spot canister ceiling lights the worst.

Crawl or basement ?


The brick probably was about equal to the old insulation in R factor. ;) Still doubled it.

Th added benefit of the expanding is the air tightness as compared to fiberglass. Relatively speaking...

1/8/14 4:52 PM

~12 years ago, not long after we bought the house -- they were definitely sieves and needed to go! we went with highly rated windows by simonton.

sparky nailed it...the big thing is minimizing air leakage. that's what made the rim-joist improvements so beneficial. the liv-room/din-room are now quite comfortable, whereas before they required a plug-in area heater if you spent any time there. also, my home-office is in the basement...it went from intolerable to tolerable, easily made comfortable for work with a plug-in radiator. we also just replaced the basement windows with glass-block all around.

Last edited by walter on 1/8/14 9:16 PM; edited 1 time in total

1/8/14 5:26 PM

What is on your 55^ concrete radiator cooling system in the basement ?

1/8/14 7:36 PM

is a run-of-the-mill ~1800w oil-filled radiator. we got ours at costco, but wallyworld and target and pretty much anyone else carries one of some sort.

1/8/14 8:33 PM

No, I meant the cement under your feet..

We concrete, pretty sure it has not been cement for a while.. ;)

1/8/14 9:09 PM

I have chroinically cold feets in the best circumstances.

So my office is setup on a wool area rug and i wear a pair of super insulated down-filled slippers. AKA Foot Duvets

1/8/14 9:54 PM

They sell these electric heated foot pads, they are great for under a desk over concrete. Or any place you have to be over cement for more than 15 minutes.
The concrete will heat sink your body temp even with over an inch of rug and padding.

You need this: ;)

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Cozy-Electric-Foot-Warmer-Mat-FW/202930325

1/9/14 6:40 AM

I added 12" of fiberglass to mine a few years ago and the difference was dramatic. At the time, I think it cost me a total of $700-$800 for the materials, but it involved a lot of awkward work due to my low-pitch roof and the fact that I built an 8'x8' raised platform in order to retain some storage space up there. If you have attic stairs, install a good cap over them to prevent air leakage.

One other thing I do is to close off the ceiling fan in the bathroom during the winter, as it's a conduit for warm air to exit the house. Considering that I pay good money to heat and humidify in the winter, it doesn't make sense to pump warm, humid air out of bathroom anyway. I just leave the bathroom door open when showering.

1/9/14 9:25 AM

have gone thru a couple rounds of DIY supplemental insulation, it was not easy but now the roof stays nice and snow-covered during most of the winter.

i had one of those heated foot-pads -- it worked well, but too well -- i got rid of it...tended to make my feet sweat. instead i picked up a fellowes heated footrest that uses a fan:



but mainly i just use the slippers.

1/9/14 9:43 AM

My office bulding sits on a concrete slab, and has forced hot air through ceiling vents. For years in winter my assistants complained they were cold and had frozen feet. We had space heaters and heated foot pads, which really didn't get it done. What did get it done was a Rinnai propane heater, which sends out heat at the floor level. Now there is peace in the office.

1/9/14 11:46 AM

I think radiant floor heat is the ticket. If I ever build, including a shop floor with cement floor it will have pipes. My shop floor is 2" of wood, preferred. ;)

Bike shop is in the garage, and I sometimes run out in my socks and stay longer than I meant to, feet!

Another decent solution for shop is those thick horse pads they sell at farm supplies. There is a 4x8 one of them in front of the washer/dryer with an area rug over which is pretty effective. Another one in front on the bench in the garage. But you got to be over it for it to help. ;)

I guess another good option would be homosote insulating board and then electric radient heat about between the board and finished floor. Not sure how efficient such a system could be. Depending in finish floor, less resilient material for finished floor had got to be lower efficiency..

The Projector and HT was in the finished basement in TN. In the winter you had to keep you feet off the floor or in the space of time it took to watch a movie you tootsies would be really cold. Maybe a trough across the foot of the seating with a heated foot bath moat to soak the feet while watching?? ;)

1/9/14 3:15 PM

If you have the cash, radiant is the ticket. Some friends of mine in Chicago (back in the '80s) rented an apartment that was so equipped. Lovely warm feet all year long!

OTOH, if you're cheap like me, remember that heat rises. When I had a basement office while I was in school, it got *cold*. A trip to the local Goodwill got me a little ceramic block heater. It never did much for the basement, but stuck under my (closed-sided) desk, it created a little warm environment that kept me from giving up. Then the heat trickled up under the edge of the desk and kept the rest of me warm.

Some day I would like radiant heat, but...I think that's a long way off, and the basement in our current house is best left in basement form. At least it's dry!

1/9/14 3:48 PM

" At least it's dry!"

If you mean no visible moisture, ok... ';)

Get a hygrometer and see just how dry it isn't. The concrete is a good humidifier...

1/9/14 3:54 PM

I mean it's DRY. We had a lot of snowmelt and a lot of pouring rain this past year, and nothing got in, even though this is a WWI-era house. We run a small humidifier in the summer, and it takes a few days for the reservoir to fill.

It's drier than just about any house I've ever lived in, let's put it that way.
:-)

1/9/14 4:07 PM

On top of a hill ?

1/9/14 6:25 PM

I just live in the south and rarely ever worry about cold. It sure gets hot sometimes but I am okay with that.

1/9/14 7:12 PM

"I just live in the south and rarely ever worry about cold. It sure gets hot sometimes but I am okay with that."

but you have to deal with rattlesnakes and rednecks! ;-)

1/9/14 7:16 PM

Nope. Well, sort of. We're in an area called "Spring Glen," (and it's called that for a reason) on the lower portion of a slope, down clos to the water. We're on a hill, but we're by no means at the top.

I think when these houses were built, the builders realized that they'd be dealing with a certain amount of moisture, and built accordingly. I, for one, greatly appreciate that.

1/9/14 7:50 PM

Well. visual water or not, the evaporation / water vapor from the concrete causing cooling to some extent. Extent based on relative humidity. If said evaporation does not cause the relative humidity to exceed approx 50-5%, this is good. As mold spores thrive above 55% and at 6-70-80% etc become prolific. Every piece of carpet I have removed out of a basement had mold someplace. If almost none, certainly in corners.

If 2x4 wood plates are nailed to the concrete with no vapor barrier between, as at the bottom of walls, it is bad to some degree. The wood happily takes the moisture the concrete will share with it. I have never removed a 2x4 wood plate out of a basement floor that had no discoloration at a minimum. You do not want to know what at a maximum constituted in the extreme cases. Usually from an outside corner on the uphill side of the lot. But also on the low side corners on walkouts when the down spots are draining/perking back under the slab. And even in the middle by the A/C handler/A-Coil. I've seen ingenious installs of condensation drains in middle of basement floors feeding the slab's evaporation process into the space. And slab drains that just drain into the gravel under the slab doing the same.

There is ALWAYS moisture, just to what degrees as far as I am concerned. especially north of the MasDix line. And the only way when it is not apparent to know for sure is to see what the relative humidity is in the space. Heating season causes more evaporation and will spike the humidity until it drys it out. Faster with a leaky house as it chimneys it's was up in older bldgs.

So when someone tell me they are dry, I usually disprove the theory upon inspection. I have had to show an arguing homeowner with a moisture probe how the puddle got from a to b by poling the probe into the paint on the cement along a path form an outside wall. Also used a laser level to prove how it could not have come from where they have been attempting to stop it from for long periods, be it sporadic conditions usually. As in when it rains for 10 days in a row every decade or so.

Most dry basements just have a small leaks that the concrete manages. As in manages to do a good job as a sponge and evaporate the vapor into the air faster than the leak has an accumulation effect. Once the concrete is saturated, accumulation...

Technically dry if no accumulation is evident? Not to me. ;)

OK, I'll stop now. ;) Except to say the hydrometer does not tell itself [or us] what it wants to believe, like we do.

1/10/14 5:35 AM

For warm feet in winter, I don't reckon you can beat heating built into the slab. We installed hydronic heating when we built, though it was a reasonably large capital expense for something that we only use for six weeks or a couple of months of the year, and then normally only on the south side of the house. Here's a couple of shots, one showing the piping clipped to the reinforcing before the slab pour, and the other showing the manifold where the pipes enter and leave the slab. A gas boiler heats the water.

We setup two zones, for the north and south sides of the house, and so far we haven't yet needed to turn the north side on, as the passive solar design keeps that side of the house pretty warm even in the depths of winter.

1/10/14 9:35 AM

Do contractors in Australia have to run the heating tubes in a clockwise configuration?

1/10/14 11:14 AM

My office is in our unfinished basement and I'm always trying to keep my feet warm. :) I have these awesome Mini Cooper car slippers that do the trick:

http://libraryofmotoring.info/2010/03/21/collectible-of-the-day-mini-cooper-plush-slippers/

We renovated our full bathroom on the main level of our ranch last year and put in electric floor heat under the tile. Future renovation to the kitchen and any other bathrooms will definitely include this...

I need to take a look at insulating the rim joist space down here in the basement - I hear that can sometimes help tremendously as well.

1/10/14 1:37 PM

I keep the crawl pace @ 40-45% relative humidity and temp approx 65-7^ thought out the winter. This the floors are 65-7^. 1st winter here the wood floors were 50^ or less during a cold snap. Nothing like refrigerator for floors I always say. ;)

The build here has no rim joists which make for a lot higher R factor are the perimeter in the wood alone. 1-1/2" thick T&G sub floor sits right on the sill plate and straight on the the girders. 3/4" oak on top of that too internally. There are no joists to create rim joists on the outside sills. I also have reflective foil insulator from the sills to the vapor barrier over lapped and caulked to the poly on the floor which is one piece, small 40 year old house @ 1200 SF. Plus Garage, minimally heated with a slight open vent on the air handler, but not insulated either on the walls or ceiling out there.

So the vapor evap off the dirt and off the foundation walls is maybe 95+ % sealed? The dehumidifier
cycles on and off during the timer window to easily keep the RH below 50% even on the low setting. I have an ejection pump sending the water out to the gutter drain that runs to street]. But that can freeze and I turn it off when it does until it thaws. But RH still stays under 50%.

Vents closed off with styrene panels with reflective face, and pretty much air tight. Dehumidifier and circulation fan down there with a remote Hygrometer/Thermometer so I know what is what.
The circuit to the fan/dehumidifier is on a timer and I adjust windows depending on time of year. 6 hour window once during the day in coldest time. The heat air duct has register down there that is partially open to raise the floor temp slightly.

The 30" of blown in insulation in the attic and poly caulked into the ceiling box/fixtures curbs chimney effect.

Post efforts lowered the gas bill 30-40 per month winter, and raised the house temp average 7-8 degrees. And the furnace cycles less often and stays on shorter windows of time.

The dusts in the crawl are only insulated near the vents. Which does not matter too much with the crawl warm now. But that first winter here with the open vents, the are that came out for the first 1-2 minutes until the metal ducts warmed was like an arctic charge of air before the warm air could start warming. So the initial drop in temp when it cycled was intense! ;O


The biggest problem I see is system for the gutter drain off NOT getting the water far enough from the foundation. It needs to be like 15' at least IMO if running onto the ground. More if the grade runs back toward the bldg. Best to have it all dump out onto a low spot or to the street where the runoff is taken out of the perc equation anywhere near the building. I am amazed how bad some folks properties are in this regard.