we have an old house with a small attic built with logs as part of the framing. Yesturday started the empty and demo. Our upstairs fitness room is completely trashed and full of totes and there’s more to go... There is A LOT left to do... We are tearing the old floor boards out and insulating then blowing in the area we can not crawl into. Lots to do.
We have caught two bats and a mouse while cleaning it out. Today’s task is to empty and shop vac the whole mess out...
Being you use it for storage why not foam the roof and walls and keep it warm??? still be better than it is now.
In that section of attic space we are going to use R-30 bats in the floor and than re deck it with osb flooring. Hopefully that will work good. Also running a small recessed directional light to point at the stove and illuminate the stove just a little bit at night almost like a night light. The spacing is 14" to 14.5" width and 9" depth in the attic. Honestly I think I am gonna beef up the rafters there spaced at 24" so I want to add one in between so they are 12" spacing. That roof is a good one but the snow load scares me sometimes.
Way to go with the indoor projects...when I built my place last year I did spray foam on the walls and blown in for the attic...blowing in insulation was one of the worst jobs I have ever done...I will never do a job that size ever again...the things I do to save a buck...
I do not like blown insulation unless there no choice man that stuff is messy and nasty... We are gonna have no choice over the kitchen and bathroom areas unfortunately I can’t crawl in there so a long stick and blower is gonna have to do the job... We have tripolmer foam in the walls and man that made a huge difference. Ya save a couple thousand bucks in our case lot of work but completely worth it...
We had a bunch of the old recessed lights that couldn’t have insulation around them. Basically we had 14 holes in the ceiling. We replaced them with LED fixtures that can be covered by insulation. We went from r30 to r60 insulation which covered all of the recessed lights. It made a huge difference! It’s so much easier to heat our house now.
Nice Pete, once that's done you should see an improvement in comfort and BTU use. After these guys get done with the outside, I need to get up in the attic and go back at getting more insulation up there.
Had my insulation upgraded and now have R-66 in the attic.. They also draft sealed.. Easier to heat for sure and I suspect the summer should be better as well.. I had this done through Mass Save and it cost me $445.00 as they paid for 75% plus the draft sealing is 100% free.. The attic now has 18" of insulation.. We have never stored anything up there as there is little clearance and you have to crawl.. Oh yeah we have had bats, birds and bees up there lol.. Probably squirrels at some time too!
There is a program in Michigan but it isn’t that affordable. We bought a great stuff pro foam gun to air seal the attic too should be fun! The insulation does qualify for a home energy credit but again not much at all $100 if I remember correctly. Unfortunately it’s cold as a mountain top up there... I did get the bats out no others critters stuck around so we are all clear!
We have been setting records it's been so cold here! Coldest weather I have EVER seen here and this has gone on for over a week! Today only got up tp 10 degrees and windy! We picked a good time to upgrade insulation, boiler and DHW!
Betting you notice a huge difference in winter heat & summer cool when done. Emery savings = $$ savings.
You aren’t kidding it’s been very cold here too! I’ve been debating a few days off just to get going on the attic! What you do to the boiler raybonz ?
Yes sir it does! You could cool this house with a ice cube and fan in the summer. It’s incredible how well that foam in the walls worked! Our attic on the other hand let’s heat out too easily... poof gone! It isn’t really all that bad but I’m betting if we do it we will agree 100% with you dave it’s probably worse than we think it is
