We built our retirement home 17 years ago on the lake. The home is moderately small at 2000 square feet, about 1000 on each of the two floors. I asked the builder that in addition to the 2x6 wall studs with FG insulation, he add 1 inch closed cell urethane foam board with aluminum foil back reflective surface facing inside with taped seams and installed under the sheet rock. By doing this, you do not add a huge amount of actual insulation to the wall and ceiling insulation, but you insulate the wood studs which are heat conduits to the outside. By insulating them, the actual gain in performance is substantial. Let me just say that we have two 275 (550 total) gallon fuel oil tanks in the basement. We fill up in August and have yet to burn more them 375 gallons of heating oil for the entire year.
We DONOT heat with wood and have used the stove only for power outages. The furnace supplies our hot water too., the year round. We live in central Maine. I don’t know how we could live more comfortably, cheaply or more self sufficient here in the woods where oil trucks would struggle to deliver, 5 months out of the year. Why everyone doesn’t use this very cheap additional construction material, I don’t know. With out the cold spots on the walls and ceilings, the convection currents and apparent wind chill is cut dramatically and the comfort level is increased, even though the temp remains the same. It has been a no brainier and has made winter much more livable in isolation and much easier to heat with a generator when the power goes out, which happens at least a dozen times a year. If all stick built houses were insulated better then they are, everyone but the energy companies would benefit.
This is not fancy and expensive super insulation with spray foam or dual wall construction. It is cheap and easy to do by any builder. The key is…insulated the ceiling and wall studs. It works amazingly well. Obviously, caulking and weatherstripping is just as important. As a side benefit, We also insulated all the interior walls for better sound and temperature control. With the windows closed, it’s a sound vault as well. You hear little noise from the out side or between the rooms.
When one of my neighbors built his house himself, a larger 3000 sg footer, he did he same thing on my advice, only with slightly thicker board. He has one gas fired space heater in the lower level which keeps his core temp for the entire house at 55 to 60 degrees. He adds heat as need when home with his seldom used wood stove. So, he does much better then I do expense wise, even with a larger house.
The metal roof we added last year does a great job of reflecting the suns rays out ward and keeping the inside very cool in the winter. Metal roofs are worth considering too.
@dagosa
That was a good technique, and you’re right, it would interrupt the thermal bridging through the studs. The benefit you are getting is mostly that the rigid foam makes an effective air seal. My only concern is that any moisture which gets into the wall cavity is now unable to dry to the inside because the foam is also a vapor barrier, and it’s unlikely to dry to the outside in a cold Maine winter. This is more complex than most people realize.
What you did means that you had an extra inch to get through to secure drywall to studs. Was it as simple as just using longer drywall screws? And maybe a bit more complicated trimming out windows? The foam I was referring to is not the expensive spray foam insulation you may be thinking of, but rather a foam used to simply air seal joints in framing and wall sheeting, to stop air movement. It is applied with a hand held “foam gun”, but is much the same as the pressurized cans available at building supply stores.
I’m glad to hear that other people appreciate having a house soundproofed.
@asecular The energy, waste and CO2 reduction as measured by the computer program was close to ACTUAL BTUS, KWHrs and gallons of fuel saved.
Transportation; 50.7% for cumptuter model, vs 45% actual
Electrcal use; 27.75% for computer model vs 26.3% ACTUAL MEASURED and paid for
Heating (space and water); 49.0% for computer model vs 42% ACTUAL MEASURED and paid for (my wife likes to sleep with the windows open).
Household waste; This one was a goverment estimate based on typical households like us based on reported waste by municipalities. In 1990 there was no recycling here, but by 2007 we took cardboard, etc to large waste bins on supermarket parking lots. The reason the low figure is so small to begin with is that this component is not a large part of CO2 and energy used. We already composted all our garden waste, which is normally the biggest part of household solid waste.
Like you, I am sceptical of computer models, even though I use them as a consultant. The goverment designed the model (based on CO2 and energy reduction) to use as a basis for dispensing grants and generating some figures to report to the Interantional Climate Commission. The retrofit refund was based on a “Before and After” home inspection, together with an air leakage test.
If I was comletely sceptical I would not even have reported these figures on this forum. But we do keep track of all energy expenses and have so since the mid seventies.
I have just ,now, came to a came to the realization that family’s remodeled but uninsulated 1920 beach house, is not cost effective to insulate. I installed a pellet stove appropriate to the cubic footage, but even at full feed, the stove needs 10 hours bring the house from 47 to 62. This winter, I’ve installed 9000watts of forced air electric this winter to supplement and to remove the dampness – The house has a massive riverrock, exterior fireplace with its foundation in the basement and extends to 5ft above the roofline of the 2nd floor.
@longprime It probably depends on how often you use the beach house and what the weather is like when you do use it. If the framing is 2x4 it does not cost a lot to blow insulation into the walls and put batts or granular insulation into the arttic.
A friend had a cottage in ski country that was uninsulated. We went there one day in January and could not keep the place warm even by running the wood stove all out. He later on insulated it to make it livable. It was also a summer retreat in the highlands. The ski lifts came later.
When the house was remodeled 30 years ago, the attic was removed infavor of higher and efficient floorspace of 2nd floor rooms. I also forgot about putting in ceiling insulation when the roof was replaced 15 years ago.
@longprime
Remember that the best bang for the buck is to address the ceiling, whether or not it’s an open space…deal with the barrier between the conditioned space and the outside.
The place to begin is to air seal, with caulk and foam, every conceivable joint in framing between inside and outside. You’ll get a big change just from foaming and caulking every joint so your warmed interior air doesn’t just flow out. You can buy the foam at any home center or lumber yard. Insulation comes after air sealing.
I worked for a small home performance contractor which does high end energy efficiency renovations. The two owners travel the state and beyond, training contractors on the newest methods for the leading contractor certification programs. The energy efficiency work starts with tighening the building envelope, and that requires stopping air flow. Air will flow through insulation, albeit slowly. Stop the airflow and then the insulation can do its job.
An approximate analogy is to compare the benefit of different clothing. You can wear a good wool or fleece jacket in a stiff cold wind and be really cold, but put a windproof shell jacket over that wool or fleece jacket and the airflow is cut drastically so the jacket insulation can do a great job.
@dagosa, I think that the reason many builders don’t use the extra foam insulation is that it is just like adding another wall. The expense is not so much in materials as labor. If an astute home buyer like you knows enough to ask for it and is willing to pay, then they are happy to do it. But many people would just see the cost increase and wouldn’t want to pay extra. And, if you live in the Sunny South like I do, the extra insulation is not worth it. 2x4 walls with FG batts on 3/8" chipboard and house wrap are plenty for us.
I grew up in a home built in 1934 using 2x6 outside wall studs with 1x6 tongue and groove nailed on the inside and outside diagonal to the studs. The attic was floored with the tongue and groove also. The interior walls and ceilings were finished with a product called “beaver board” as backing for wall paper and the exterior was finished with lap siding. The dead air space in the walls and ceiling were meant to insulate the house and it seemed effective.
@aseculasr Yes, miniscule, but it was part of the survey. I pay less attention to this unimportant stuff than you seem to. The results show a good relationship between a model designed to measure greenhouse gasses reduction and the actual results in BTUs and KWhr reduction. If I had lived in Washington state the greenhouse gas reduction due to electric power reduction would have been zero, since nearly all power is hydro-generated. Since all our power here is coal generated there is a close correlation.
@asecular; We’ve both studied statisics, no doubt. I know when to ignore these “accuracies” and when not to. Discussion on Consumer Reports are plentiful; they state that on repair statistics of appliances anything as small as 1% difference between brands is meaningless.
If I had lived in Washington state the greenhouse gas reduction due to electric power reduction would have been zero, since nearly all power is hydro-generated.
The larger electrical utilities in the PNW (Puget Sound Energy (PUD), Portland General, PacificPower, Idaho Power) all get significant power from coal plants, approaching 50% and are now located at a significant distance from their customers,
@longprime Good info; thanks. I worked in a plant in Washington state which uses a large amount of electricity and it mostly came from water power, thus the lower rate. It was siginificantly less than in an all coal power grid.
The Columbia Gorge area between Washington and Oregon is extremely windy. As a result, there are several windfarms in the region near the Dalles with hundreds of turbines. There’s also a large windfarm on a mountaintop near Ellensburg Washington which, unlike most windfarms, welcomes the public with a beautiful visitor center and short interpretive programs in the middle of the 149 turbines - A very interesting experience.