NOT GOING THROUGH THAT AGAIN!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

OK so my wife and I bought our first house last August and we completely love it. How ever, last winter we had a total melt down of our plumbing system do to frozen and busted pipes. I had to completely re plumb the entire house. I went with pex for ease of installation and cost.

Well I figured out why our plumbing completly got destroyed. We have huge huge huge air infiltration problems in our basement/crawl space. I have began the process of closing off all of our foundation vents and sealing uo the basement. I need help on deciding on how to close up a few areas.


How should I close off these areas? One of them used to be access to a sistern, and the other one used to be access to the oil tank which is no longer used (now its propane ughhh). These areas both just had ply wood covering them with no insulation what so ever. Can I just build wood frames with ridged insulation in the center to stop air flow or should u completly block it odd with cinder block? I just don't know the best way to stop the air flow into our basement and into our house.

Yes I can get access from the inside. It a basement with about 5 1/2 ft of head space. Then there is a small crawl space are about 10x20. The smaller hole is located on the crawl space side and the large one is on the basement side. I was thinking of doing a treated 2x4 frame fitted to the inside of the smaller hole filled with ridgid insulation and capped offwith a treated sheet of play wood. Same thing for the large one, just build a slightly slanted frame almost like a roof. Then use ridged 2in insulation for that as well. I'm gonna post some better pictures.

This is the big opening where the file oil tank is. It leads straight into the basement


This is the wood frame they have sitting on it. It's just a wooden frame with tar paper in the top


Thus is the smaller hole that leads under the crawl space.


And thus us our house. Built in the 1890's it was built by the town doctor and used as his office from 1890-1930's. Also served as the towns funeral home :/ now it's our residence to take care of.

Lake Girl said:

Great house! Original woodwork inside?

I agree with begreen but I would probably seal up both areas with block or concrete (remove the old oil tank, it's just a liability). Since you have access to the basement from the outside with the storm doors, you really don't need those other sections open. What kind of partition or insulation are on the storm doors? Sealing around joints? May be contributory to air infiltration...

Click to expand...

Tons of wood work in the house. The guy that originally built it (Dr. Sharp) owned the town drug store which was also a home goods store where someone could buy wood varnish and wood work. He would import different types of wood and paints and often brought people to his house (just across the street from the drug store) to show them the new products he carried which were installed in his house











The wood work, the herringbone floors, the porch, and the history, is what sold us on the house. We were fortunate enough to find the house the day it hit the market. We didn't know it was used as a funeral home until we were sitting with the previous owners at the closing table lol

I'm going to start the process of closing off these areas tomorrow and will document each step and post them here just in case someone has the same problems I have been having. I'm also going to re-point the brick foundation and weather strip all of the doors. I have had a surprisingly tough time finding other people doing this type of thing? What other ways have you guys found to be effective at weather proofing your house? I wanna keep in as many BTU's as possible lol