The Big Insulation Post

Once all of the utilities were roughed in, it was time to finally get insulation. This is a topic that’s high on my list of priorities and I could spend several blogs harping about insulation, but I won’t… too much. :P

I do get excited about R-values, infiltration rates, cellulose vs. fiberglass (I can see Shawn’s eyes are rolling already) I admit it: I can be weird. And here’s where I got weird. I wanted to spend more on insulation than on granite countertops. I have been pickier about what goes in behind the drywall than what will come after it; well, maybe I’ve been obsessed with insulation more than picky. What did Shawn say? Paranoid about insulation? Yeah, that could describe the level of weirdness on my obsession.

Our contractor’s insulation bid was the normal blown in fiberglass in the walls with fiberglass in the attic. But I adamantly refused, knowing full well that what I want will cost 3 times what he bid. But really? How often do you upgrade insulation? My argument is I can upgrade countertops, paint, fixtures, and all sorts of things if we have to, but not insulation. I will readily admit I went overboard, but I hate being cold (must be that Honduran still in me), so the more there is between me and the exterior cold, the better. We ended up going with spray from insulation, and did a hybrid thing. 

First a skim coat of heavy dense 2lb foam in the wall cavities. This is mainly to provide air sealing since a lot of the heat lost in a house is due to infiltration. Also, this type of foam is more expensive so could only afford a little of it. That gave us an R7.4. That’s the blue foam you can see inside the wall cavity.

Next, the rest of the wall cavity was filled full of the lighter spray foam, then shaved flush at the studs. Add another R16 to the walls. And since we have a 1” of foam board on exterior of wall, we now have a total of R30 in our walls!

The guy in the picture above is Dane, our insulation sub, cutting the lighter foam (cream colored one) flush after he sprayed the walls. He is the same sub that we used 3 years ago to spray foam all around the rim joist before we moved into the basement. And here he is spraying our vaulted ceiling full of R50 foam. 

Not sure OSHA would approve

To help some of the infiltration, Shawn and I went around and caulked the joint between the bottom plate of all exterior walls and the subfloor. Caulked the butt joint between the two top plates on top of the exterior walls, and wherever there were two or more studs butted together, we caulked that joint. 

Doesn't that look cozy already?

This was something the contractor said they like to do on their houses, and it sounded like a good idea to me (Shawn probably thought more overkill).

You can see in this picture all of the white along the floor and at every butt joint of wood.

We couldn’t afford to do a skim coat of the blue spray foam in the attic on top of the sheetrock to seal air infiltration there. So the next best thing was that we went around with a can of foam insulation and sealed every hole through the top plates of all the interior walls into the attic. And tons of holes there were. 

It didn't really take all that long to take care of this.

You can see in this picture where the arrow points to the foam sealing where the electric wires make their way into the attic. I did that around every plumbing pipe too.

The insulation in the attic will slow down this heat transfer between hot room and cold attic, but it won’t do much air leaking in and out, specially Fiberglass loose blown in the attic. But you can google that. I’ll just leave it at controlling air infiltration is as important as how much insulation you have in your attic. So instead of fiberglass, I wanted cellulose. Not just any cellulose of course. I want sulfur-free cellulose (or it will smell like a rotten egg when humid) and I wanted a lot of it. R50 total, which is about 15” of cellulose.

Speaking of attic insulation, because our trusses don’t have an energy heel on them, the most cellulose we would get right on top of exterior walls would be 6” of it, which is about R13. Right here is a spot where more insulation would have been better, because it is the shortest path for heat from interior to exterior (and heat, like water, likes the path of least resistance to go to cold). Imagine this part of the roof full of snow in the middle of winter. R13 here will practically be ice dam city all winter long.

Filling up energy heel with foam.

So I asked to spend premium dollars to fill this whole thing with the blue spray foam to maximize Rvalue. This got us closer to R40, which is good.

New international residency code calls for R50 minimum in the attic for my area and climate, though local codes are still only requiring R38 min (not enough).

The other thing that needed to be air sealed is wherever there is a light or can light in the ceiling. If you look at a house, the ceiling ends up being like a Swiss cheese with all of those holes cut into the drywall wherever there is a light box. Because of the stack effect, where hot air rises and creates a pressure difference between the hot warm interior and the cold attic, you literally get like a vacuum effect that causes enough heat to be lost through the ceiling. The cumulative effect of all those ceiling fixture holes is like having an open window with the heat running.

But, to seal these holes in the ceiling, first we needed to have drywall! So yes, drywall came next.

Quickly we discovered that it really wasn’t saving us much money to not drywall the garage since we would not get the drywall guys to come back and do that later for what they would charge to do it now when they were here. But we also wanted to insulate the garage, and of course no money left in the budget to pay someone to do it (since I did spend all of it on fancy insulation as Shawn calls it… and a Beam vacuum).

See, I knew that was worth saving!

Remember that pile of insulation that we saved and hauled up to the barn loft? Yeap. It had to come down since it was now going to become our new garage insulation. 

This stuff super itchy.

So we took vacation off work one day and went to work. Again, fully decked out in tyvek suits and masks, we got the garage insulated and ready for drywall.

Here's a shot of our garage after we got done insulating it.

Should be able to keep some heat in here now!

Say Cheese!

While we were working on the garage insulation, the fireplace sub showed up to finish installing the chimney cap and spark arrestors on our chimneys. So I snapped a couple of pictures while they worked.

Inside, we also needed to take care of a few things to get ready for drywall. We went around and sealed with foam around all of the windows (again that insulation and infiltration stuff) then stuffed the rest of that cavity with fiberglass. 

101 Uses of Whinny combs!

We also had to have the insulator come back to scrape the walls some more since the spray foam insulation was sticking out past the studs and it would cause the drywall to bulge out. 

And then we nitpicked that too so we used a horse curry comb to scrape the foam some more.

That’s what Shawn is doing in this picture.

Soundproofed.

Another thing that needed to get done before drywall was sound wall insulation. This is to help minimize noise between walls of a bathroom and bedroom, mainly for privacy reasons. So Shawn and I did that too. Here you can see him here in the bedroom wall.

Then finally it was time for the drywall crew to come. And they came and they went fast! This is my favorite milestone in construction. The interior finally takes shape, and from now on it’s the pretty stuff that happens.

Next, it needs some paint

First thing to get drywalled was the garage. What a difference! 

Here's another view of the drywalled garage where the new landing is. Unfortunately we won't be able to afford to pay someone to prime and paint the garage, so that will fall on us to do, but we'll wait until it warms up a little.

We like the door moved here better!

After hanging the drywall, they taped and mudded the joints and did the texture. Here’s where we had a huge problem. I don’t think our contractor grasped how seriously tight our house is. Yes… all my fault because of my fancy insulation/air sealing job. Good for later when we want to keep air from escaping. Not good now because all of that moisture from the taping and mudding had nowhere to go. Here's some shots of drywall!

View from mudroom through new opened up wall!

From kitchen looking towards foyer and stairs

The new vaulted ceiling

The dehumidifier did the trick.

Our geo unit was not yet running (mainly because I did not want them to install it during drywall stage since all of that dust would go straight into the blower and we ain’t about to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get that thing clogged up with drywall). So the water was literally running down the windows where it was condensing because of the cold outside. We had pools of water on the floor. Shawn and I dug out the dehumidifier, pulled out every fan we owned and got to work.

The contractor also wanted heat in there to help the drywall mud cure, so we dug up our handy ventless propane heater that we bought several years ago when the one and only heater in the old house died in the middle of one winter. (Did I mention that all of these items were the first to get packed into the storage room?) I thought I’d snapped a picture of our heater, but didn’t.

Shawn hooked up the heater to the propane line for the kitchen cooktop, and it did a nice job of keeping the house at 65-70 in the main floor, despite the fact that there was no insulation in the attic yet.

We also cranked up the basement radiant heat to like 85. I think the crews were ready to strip down to their underwear to work since it did get hot. J

Soon, in a day the dehumidifier did its job and the moisture went away. We did end up with some damage to a couple of pieces on the windows that would need to be replaced. But other than that, things are good.

Now that we had drywall in the ceiling, it was time for me to crawl up in the attic and satisfy my obsession with air sealing. So I crawled around on my hands and knees trying very carefully not to put my foot through the ceiling drywall. We mostly worked during the evenings, so the nice thing was that I could shut off the flash light and if I could see light from the main floor through a can light or light box, it got globbed with foam to seal it. So now I can sleep better knowing I gave it my best shot. After the attic sealing job was done, Dane came back to fill our attic full of cellulose.

We did get our first real snow accumulation right before Christmas, so Shawn fired up our lawn tractor and snowblower to clear the lane out because drywallers were still working. I headed to town to get some fuel for the lawn mower, and I came within a hair of blowing me along with the kids up. Thank God we didn’t end up burned up or blown up to pieces. It was scary at the time… still is thinking that one spark and we were gonners. I was done filling up the gas can, so then added gas to the car. It was freezing outside so I didn’t want to wait to fill it up completely, so I squeezed the handle to stop it and the lock came undone, but when I pulled out the nozzle it was still on! I’m squeezing the trigger, but the stupid thing is broken and won’t shut off. The nozzle was stuck open and I’m just standing there holding this spewing thing aiming it away from us. So fuel is pouring everywhere onto the ground and I didn’t know what to do. I’m frantically scanning for the emergency shut off and I can’t see it anywhere on the building (and I’m afraid to move in case static electricity sparked or something) and I’m yelling at the teenager at the register who is texting. I’m about to throw the nozzle on the ground to go in and choke her, when she finally looks up, freezes just staring at me, while I’m waving my hand and making the kill-throat motion. I’m sure I meant it as shut off the thing, not the you’re dead thing. I’m sure it didn’t take her long, but it seemed like she stared for a long time. Finally she pushed the darn button to shut off the valve. I wasn’t sure if I should turn on the car or not, but eventually I drive away, reeking of gas since some splattered all over my shoes. I look at the rearview mirror and both kids are sound asleep. Thank you Lord because nothing bad happened.

All the way home I’m going over things trying to think what I could have done differently. I am more cautious now and look at the pump first to see the fuel is indeed shut off before I pull the nozzle out, since the safety warning on the pump (yeah, I took the time to read it now) says don’t pull it out if that happens!

When I got back, I snapped a picture of Shawn blowing out the lane.

Back to construction: One last thing to highlight this post is that while insulation and drywall was going on inside, the exterior stone work was going on outside. Since it was December and cold, they covered the porch with plastic and use portable heaters to help. They can stone/grout ok down to 30 degree weather. 

Next step, finish siding and get some columns.

So now the bottom of the exterior columns are built and stoned as well as the porch and the area in front of the garage. There was only one miscommunication about the water ledge that I wanted on top of the stone on the garage walls. But it wasn’t a big deal and they re-did it. The color of the stone has a lot of the colors that we have in our shingles. It also goes well with the retaining blocks that we used on our window wells around the corner and we like how it goes with our siding color.

Next came the coat of primer. And the holidays.  Not much really happened during the Christmas holiday construction-wise, but right after the new year the trim carpenters will start!

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

So that’s it for this month. Next month: Trim!

We are now Roughed-In

A lot of work went in the first part of December!


First off, we moved that first week in December to our new apartment. Since it’s only one bedroom we’re still all piled into one room. It’s fun… like long term camping. Kids seem to enjoy it. :)

One tired crew after moving all day!

My in-laws once again showed up to help and we got the bare minimums moved in a couple of truckloads and vanloads. But in order to make room for all of the subs/materials that were coming in and out we had to empty out the garage and empty out the basement completely.

Most of our priceless possessions are out here!

So as to not have to pay for a storage unit since we now have to pay rent and another set of utility bills, we decided to just put our stuff outside on the concrete slab where the old house bedroom used to be.
We covered the whole thing with tarps, and I have my fingers crossed that things will be ok outdoors. (Shawn I think hopes a tornado comes in December and makes just “my junk” as he calls it disappear).

Street View from Google of our apartment. We're in the basement in this old house.

Here’s a picture of our new digs for the next couple of months.

Graduation weekend someone was having a good time and decided our vehicles parked out there didn’t look good enough, so they took it upon themselves to decorate them. Several vehicles got the treatment. Shawn covered it up with some fancy aluminum tape (all we had on hand since we were leaving for church when we discovered this Sunday am) so you can't read what's on the trunk now very well.

The joys of living in campustown

We tried a little buffing compound and we think it will come off ok. Since the repair is less than our deductible we'll take care of it ourselves. Still, we decided to not fix the car until we move back home in case they decide to get creative with our car again. Evan was excited when the police showed up to file a report, and asked the officer if he would put the bad guys in jail. I was hoping (even if not true) that he would tell our son that yes, he would. But he replied, “I would have to catch them first, and that’s not likely.” Great lesson there.

There’s definitely a different pace to construction when you have a contractor in charge! With us, it was one sub at a time and one project at a time for months at a time (since we only had money to pay one at a time), so not so much happened at once.  But the rough-in stage with a contractor is a whirlwind of subs coming and going. The nice thing is that progress happens fast too!

Early December brought the plumber and electrician in. The plumbing labor was now over budget because he had to redo his bid. (That’s what happens when you redo things) The electrical rough-ins had some new additions that were not part of the bid so needed to update and that went over budget too. Figures. But, plumbing and wiring are done!

Drill Rig and the pipes coming out of the wells that got buried below frost leves

During this time, the HVAC contractor sent in his well-drilling sub-contractor so we could have the geothermal wells dug before the ground froze. They arrived early in the am one day and they were still out there drilling when we went to bed. They dug 4 wells about 200’ deep and the only spot that seemed to work was near the house by the garage. The guy commented that after about 50ft he hit solid limestone for the rest of the way. They will come back later to drill a line to hook up the wells outside to get the pipes into the basement. They will use a directional boring machine to tunnel under the house and pop-into the basement. Since we have radiant heat tubing in the concrete all over the basement, there is only one room that had no pipes.  He said they can get that drill bit located so perfectly that they can pop right on the spot. So I’ll get to mark the spot and we’ll see how they do.

Roughing-in some data/cable/phone wires

One thing that was not included in the electrical bid was the technology/low voltage wiring for things like phone, cable, data. So we met with the folks at Easy Living Store to talk about these things and got their estimate back. We can’t afford to pay for them to run phone, cable, and data so we ended up doing that ourselves. I wanted to have intercoms at the door, upstairs and the basement, but the salesman talked us out of it since he said now with wireless baby monitors and cell phones the intercoms don’t end up being used as much. I had this grand vision of pushing a button and sweetly calling the children from wherever they were to come up for dinner, and they’d swiftly come marching up the stairs. Yeah… he said that never works, only in movies. He has intercoms in his house and never used them when the kids were little (they couldn’t reach to touch the button to respond) and now that they are teens he just texts his kids to get their attention. So no intercoms (plus not in the budget either, so there!).

Shawn's building boxes that will go in the ceiling to keep insulation from touching the in-ceiling speakers

Also, we wanted to someday have whole house stereo speakers, so we wired those too since we knew we could do that (we did it before in the basement) and we could save the labor to have them do it. The Easy Living Store had good deals on wire shelving for closets, so we will have them install those. They also prewired for security cameras and a monitor since because of our layout we can’t see out the front door or the house very well. And out in the country people just pull up to your property and when home alone I’d like to see if it’s the neighbor selling girl scout cookies or some stranger that I’d rather not open the door to.

The Beam Outlet

Here’s where it wasn’t a good idea for Shawn to let me talk to the salesman alone: I ended up falling in love with the idea of a built-in vacuum cleaner (totally not in the budget anywhere!) and I somehow convinced Shawn to let me have one.

(Shawn says I might have agreed to not get birthday, mother’s day, anniversary, Christmas presents for like 10 years while I was tripping on built-in vacuum euphoria… I thought I said for 1 year).

See that little white box with a pipe going down to the floor in the picture to the left? That’s one of the vacuum outlets.

One cool thing is we ended up getting some floor dustpan outlets too. So I can sweep the floors and push the dirt and junk to the dustpan to clean up. Neat!

Next thing that got installed were basement and main floor fireplaces. And guess what? These two actually came under budget. That was a nice surprise.

The main floor fireplace will be propane. Originally, when the house was framed 4 years ago, the upstairs fireplace was going to go in the corner of the room. But we ended up going with bigger windows in the Great Room, and forgot about that. So when the framer came to add the fireplace, now there wasn’t room for it.

So we moved it to the middle of the room. Rich, our contractor, said our room was a nice size that a big fireplace will look good here.

We’re very excited and can’t wait to see this all finished with a mantle and the stone installed as well as how it will look with our flooring.

The basement fireplace was also installed. This one is a wood burning fireplace, and the chimney for it went all the way through the main floor and up to the attic and through the roof.

Here in this picture you can see the pipe that now has been framed in.

The basement fireplace is huge. Not only is the wall massive, the unit too.
It really dominates this space, and we like how it's a big focal point.
Our vision for this room is cozy chairs with bookcases lining up the wall.

This is our wood burning fireplace.

Ahhh... I can just picture cold winter weekend afternoons snuggling up with a good book. Ok... maybe that's my vision, but sure sounds nice doesn't it?

Vent baffles in the attic.

To save some money here and there, we take care of some things. One of these was installing ventilation baffles up in the attic. This task wasn’t too hard. The purpose of a ventilation baffle is to allow the attic to ventilate. So what these things do is they keep the insulation from spilling out of the attic into the eaves, clogging up the vents. You install it so there is a free gap along the roof sheathing, and this allows air to get into the attic and vent out through the vents installed at the ridges of the roof. Ventilation will help to get hot air out of the attic in the summer, control humidity accumulation in there, and in the winter to help keep the attic cool so that the snow on the roof won’t melt because of a hot attic thus leading to ice dam problems. It’s a good thing to have ventilation, so we got these to help our attic have adequate ventilation.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that so much happened in two weeks. But that's a good thing.

So now that all utilities have been roughed in, we're ready for the next big step: Insulation! That will be the focus of my next post.