Stove For a New Build

I definitely have reservations about spray foam. I think we will just stick with traditional batts, rock wool maybe? I read it is less bug and critter friendly. I think spray foam is great for sealing air leaks but at the same time it’s an unknown long term. Everyone pushes for the highest efficiency but also at what cost and payback period vs burning an extra half cord of wood a year?

 

The double stud wall is a great solution but does up the cost. In the 1 wall that we didn't build as strawbale (because of a roof line connection) we did this. It's a 10" thick wall filled with dense pack celulose. That wall + the ceilings cost more to insulate than the rest of the house combined almost 2x. It's all about balance, but I would 100% agree that getting as much insulation as you can afford will keep your long term costs / maintenance down. And the off gassing noted probably can't be overstated. Air quality should alway be taken into account.

 

I may have mentioned this before, but anyone set on spray foam needs to look into Airkrete...all the advantages of spray foam, none of the problems.
Home | Airkrete - All Green Light Weight Cement Insulation!

 

I was going to suggest rock wool. The wall doesn’t have to be 10” thick to take advantage of the offset studs. I would do 2x6 and 2x4 at a minimum. 2x6 walls are more resistant to sound transfer they hold more weight, and they provide more clearance for utilities.

2x4 is fine for an interior wall or a storage shed, but not an exterior wall. My wife and son and I have been planning a new house together. My son wants to build his own, but is involved with the planning for ideas and planning. A double offset stud exterior wall is a must have for us. The added r value and sound reduction is huge. Rock wool is the best option we have found so far. We have not looked at aircrete yet, but I will mention it to my wife. We want a wood roof. It reduces summer time solar heat gain by factors, and helps hold heat in the home in the winter.

This push for super high efficiency is insane. The numbers don’t pencil out. Foam is nice for certain things, and yeah it’s great under new siding for added r value on an old drafty house like the one we are in now, but there are downsides for sure. I was in a big pole shed with an open front, kind of a lean-to really. There was 20-ish year old foam stacked like skyscrapers. It had been removed from a school roof and replaced by new foam because it “was old and no longer held enough r value” I just wanted enough for a small walk in cooler. Even with one whole side of this building open and the foam had 20+ years to off gas, the place smelled like foam!!! It was nuts. I decided right there that breathing that for the rest of my life was not going to happen. If it is going to smell like that over 20 years later, then it always will. A house pulls air through the insulation and all of those fumes come with it.

Our goal with a home build is to have it well insulated, and not have to stoke the fire all the time. I would be fine with propane heat with wood on the side. Have as few/many fires as we want and not have to stay busy loading the stove because the house leaks like a sieve and needs insulation. Wood is currently our only heat source, and it gets old at times, especially with my mother in law living here, because she needs to stay toasty at 80+ years old.

Triple pane windows are the other must have item for us, because windows are the lowest r value item in the house. They are essentially a hole in the wall covered with plastic. Minimal r value…. Increasing that number by 50% or more is a big deal. I did the math on how much heat escapes from our double pane windows in a winter, and it was insane. Measure your windows and add up the square ft and figure the r value and how much heat is lost at 50/70/100° temp difference and your brain just might explode. The numbers are not good. I told my wife the numbers when I figured it out and she said “why even have insulation then?”. It was that bad.

The building industry will push the cheapest thing with the highest markup. Foam is cheap to make. Pennies. But the slightly higher r value is pushed so hard that people forget about everything else, and the price is higher because people love them r values and don’t know how else to get em.

 

This is VERY true statement

Remember houses are built to minimum code rules set by the Govt.

most of this thread spent discussing heat loss.
IME heat loss less of a problem that water control. Houses are rotting,

let’s look at a standard northern built 1990s home layers from outside
Vinyl siding says on it stops 90% water
Houses wrap— for sake of argument it stops all water how is it installed?
T50 slap stapler it’s effectively a screen at best
OSB ; that is chip board and glue, gets wet and balloons

 

On most/many houses replacing the windows has a pretty poor payback...if at all. Now, on a newer home built to be very efficient right from the get-go, "average" windows become much more of a target.
I know our well-built 1940 home responded much more to attic insulation, and general air sealing, than it did to new properly installed (I was there the whole time to nitpick!) windows.

 

Simply replacing windows isn’t going to do much. They need to be upgraded to a higher r value. A lot of people replace their windows because someone contacted them and sold them on the idea because it is a big money maker.

Air leakage should be taken care of on a new build. No reason not to. You need air exchanges, but not wind, lol.

 

Staying on the windows, to me another big factor is location. When we designed we focused most of the windows on the South side of the house for solar gain. With the 2' overhangs, we don't get a ton of sun in them in the summer, but it for sure helps on a sunny winter day. Windows are at a minimum on the north, and relatively small compared to the south.

The offset stud wall should be standard practice IMHO. It's such a better design, for the nominal additional cost. I would still 100% do a strawbale again if I were to start over, but it will never become more than niche because its heavy in labor. The bales are substantially cheaper than any conventional insulation / wall system, but if you contract it out, you'd loose it all and probably then some with the labor required on all the details.

 

Our problem right now is most of our windows are on the north side of the house, and they are 4x5 ft! That’s 120 sq ft of glass that gets minimal sun and with temps of -40F. We had the room closed off in the winter before my mother in law moved in, but then we needed lore room. It was easy to heat the house before, but now it seems like a full time job. It doesn’t help that the house is almost 170 years old. It still has the original log floor joists.

 

Not many do that...unless maybe going from single pane to double...but at least around here, you don't see much triple pane

 

I think beardley has a point I have 2 lil windows that face north kitchen and bathroom

11 face south rest are east west Solar gain this time of year immense. My 3 triple pane are 34”x78”
Think sliding glass door framed in or free

 

So........you're saying that you put your MIL in cold storage?

 

Our house now has two “cold” rooms. One has the original pre1900 windows still, the other is over the crawl space and is just plain cold. We keep the doors closed.

Contractor asked for a budget for the wood stove. I told him $2500, and it will probably end up less. Thinking hard about an Englander Blue Ridge. I’m hoping it’s similar to how the 30NC was…

 

No, she got the stove room and we took the north end.

 

You don’t have to spend a lot to get s good stove. You CAN spend a lot, but you don’t have to.

 

I’m of the opinion that simple and functional is the way to go, often leads to a budget friendly purchase. I’d like a slightly large stove that I can put less wood in vs a smaller stove I have to burn red hot all the time.

 

Regarding the windows and their R value ratings vs their cost debate, I'll leave this here.

I have cellular shades in the house I bought. If I had known how well they perform, I would have bought them years ago!

They perform extremely well as evidenced by the temp difference of the room compared to behind the shade next to the glass.

Some estimates quote a 40% reduction in heat loss.

 

I have same yooperdave

 

That is basically what I did with our new house. Slider, bigger windows etc all on the south side.

 

I thought I read the quality went down hill and they were having some QC issues a few years ago. The owner or a rep used to post here.