Sorry, I didn’t mean that in the derogatory sense. Maybe another way to put it is: if you’re going to put up drywall or another finish layer over it, then you need the furring strips. Otherwise, perhaps not, and BG’s method would work fine.
My suggestion is not for a finished space. If you are putting up drywall then put up the firring strips or 2x3s first. What surprised me was how quickly the glue fired off and started holding. All you need is a very temporary solution. Once it’s bonded to the concrete, you have to chisel it off. It cures fully in about a week, but is holding well after about 5-10 minutes. The trick is to let it dry for one minute before putting it up.
I didn’t take it in any bad way. On the one hand I don’t want to go totally crazy thinking about it, but I thought I might have had to rethink my whole approach since two big home stores in my area, including HD, did not have long enough tap cons for my plan. It’s good as well to have a feel for how quick the adhesive sets.
Well, I started. I started to put up some panels, putting spots of adhesive on the back. It’s only temporary anyway, until the furring strips go up. I smeared some adhesive to act as a sealant between an 8 inch section I had to add to the bottom of each panel. I started smearing it on the front of the vertical tongue and groove areas, but stopped after a while because it was messy-that pl300 adhesive doesn’t disnpense that smoothly. The concrete wall, which might look smooth from a distance, is far from it. Things I’ve noticed so far:
-There are a fair amount of things next to the wall that don’t move that easily, like the oil tank, boiler pumps and manifold, circuit breaker panel, domestic hot water tank, sewer pipe, etc., that chances are won’t get insulated.
-I’m don’t know what to do about the insulation around the window and door. Extend the frame somehow? Flashing?
-It cuts nice with a table saw-especially those 8” sections
-A long utility knife worked pretty good for the window opening, but not as smooth as the table saw.
-It will be tedious to remove the existing wire located on furring strips on the concrete walls to the furring strips that will brace the inulation boards
-Then there will be the external electrical boxes that will have to be replaced with low profile models.
Anyway, a lot of liitle things and places where it looks like it’ll be hard if not impossible to install the boards and drywall.
Just some obsevations so far…
I did this type of renovation a couple years ago and it was very worthwhile. I used 2” foam (blue or pink not the foil faced as that will wick moisture) then a stud wall with non-faced fiberglass. This is what buildingscience site recommended, and it’s working really well. I sealed the cinderblocks first with drylock, glued the foam to it then did the stud wall. I finished off with sheetrock.
I’m no big fan of the recessed pots either, but… my kitchen has them, and I’ve got regular 15W curly-Q CFLs in them. With four of the six on (I keep two screwed in halfway) the kitchen is lit about as well as the six incandescent spotlights that came with the house, with none of the heat. Just having the incandescents on were enough to heat the kitchen without the heater. The CFL spotlight bulbs don’t work well, and they take time to warm up when they are cold. When cold they put out little light, takes about 5 minutes to warm up. This was only nice at 5AM going to turn on the coffee pot, but otherwise would have to turn on the lights, then come back 5 minutes later if I needed in the kitchen. This is not a problem with the curly-Q ones, they light up instantly.
I’m really hoping that by the time I’m actually building the house, that LED technology will be viable for whole-house lighting instead of spotlighting like it is now.
Also, stay away from ceiling fans with light kits that point the bulbs straight up. They have a strobing effect when the fan is on.
I got a couple of led mini spots, mostly for the little woman who like to keep them on. They really don’t put out that much light and were, like, 25 bucks each.
I’m okay with the cf spots in the kitchen, though they do take a while to warm up. I just don’t think that the recessed lights in general put out much light. I’m not planning on putting in more light circuits so I’m going to stick with 6 flourescent fixtures in the 1000 ft2 basement, win or lose I guess.
But for our business I ordered 2 LED exterior broadcast lights. They are 50W in lieu of 400W. We have them on 60-80 hours a week. They are an extra $100 ($250 instead of $150), but by my math I paid the extra $100 for them in 42 weeks at $.10/KW. They were new lights, I needed them and didn’t have them before, otherwise you need to do the full $250 cost on the payback allowance. Even throwing in $60 for install on a replacement job, that still pays for itself in 130 weeks.
Velvetfoot, if you have a curly bulb, stick one in the pot and I think you’ll be surprised at how well it works. I was, tried it when a bulb burned out and all I had left was the curly bulb. Was just going to be temporary until I could get another spot, but when I saw how well it worked I just replaced all of them with the curly bulbs. And, found I only needed 3 of the 6, when with the CF spots I needed all 6. Currently have 4 running though.
mbcijim is correct though, to go further on this we should probably start a new thread, if anyone is interested in discussing lighting.
Thanks. I never tried the curlies in the pots, figuring the curlies-in-spot bulb would be better. It’s way more expensive though.
I still don’t think 6 will kick off enough lumens for a 1000 ft2 basement.
Of course, there’s the dropped ceiling style to discuss: I heard http://www.ceilinglink.com was good and cheaper than HD’s, but still not cheap.
Then the floor: 1” xps + what? I’d like an engineered wood floor on top, but not sure if that’s considered an adequate fire retardant.
Everything is so expensive: the 2x8 corning formulate 250 xps from HD was something like 13.90/sheet.
Doing math for a 1000’ square floor, you get big numbers (for me) for the eng. wood floor.
This could be spun off into a basement finishing thread…
Starting to look at surface mount flourescent fixtures. I’m thinking 2 bulb T8. The lowest temp bulb they have in HD appears to be 3500K. The curly Qs in the house are 2700K.
Most walls covered with foam now.
Put Tyvek tape on one wall and started to drill holes for the firring strips.
The Black and Decker hammer drill crapped out after one hole! I bought it new last year and this was all the work it had seen. One hole in concrete! I couldn’t believe it.
I took it apart and there was a broken gear and loose parts. What a piece of crap.
I got a Harbor Freight rotary hammer drill for 70 bucks. We’ll see how that works out.
