My pathetic insulation situation. Ideas?

[OhioBurner©]

OK so I knew the insulation wasn't so great in this house, and I did poke my head into the attic several years ago, but the hanging plastic and fallen down insulation and mess, along with mouse and rat dropping right at the hatch, discouraged me enough that I haven't ever really figured out what is up there. Until the other day. I crawled in with my camera, and was a bit shocked at what I saw. But it does explain why I am pumping a billion BTUs into this place and still cold!

First, a quick explanation of the house. The original house was built 1900, 1 story with a half floor upstairs. They built an addition in 1990 about the same size as the original house, and they go together like a tee.


1st floor is on top. There is a woodstove (currently replaced by pellet) in the center of the old side (right side) and a wood insert in the great room on the left side.

The new side I still need to re-investigate. I'm not sure if anyhting can be done over the great room, its cathedral ceiling with tongue and groove wood. If I recal properly, it had blown in over the bedroom side and seemed ok. However there are many drafts and the construction was very cheap on the addition. Just 2x4 walls, and the tall great room wall (west side of house) bows and creeks in the wind pretty bad.

The old side 2nd floor consists of two bedrooms with attic running along each side. However the stairway cuts off one section of attic which has no access so no ideal whats in that section but I'm guessing nothing but cold air. The pass through bedroom appears to be entirely uninsulated!

The plaster walls/ceiling has nothing between the plaster and the underside of the metal roof. There is fiberglass on the attic floor though, beside the bedroom, but that’s it.



Other side of uninsulated bedroom.



The eave end. Didn't realize it until I was reviewing the pics but right there in the middle is an old brick chimney (not used).



Here is the door into the attic on the insulated bedroom. Neither attic door is unsulated, and this one has fallen down crap right in front of the door.



So this room is insulated.... Everything. Floor, walls, roof, eaves... with plastic under the insulation up against the metal roof (directly touching the metal).



There appeared quite a lot of condensation, and some of it has fallen down (I presume due to the weight of the condensation).


So some questions. Where the heck to begin. Super limited budget currently. Might not even be staying it this house for very long. But open to ideas. Though I'd love to just dump this place, I figure its going to take me a year or two to fix it up enough to be even sell-able without taking a severe reaming.

So I have a lack of insulation in one room, too much - along with improper use of plastic in the other, and no ventilation at all. Can anything even be done to the ceiling parts without tearing down the walls/ceilings? I don't see how i could get anything in there really, its only 4" between the wall and the metal roof. And I'd really hate to tear down a perfectly good wall when there is so much else to do. But open to ideas...

 

[brian89gp]

How tall are your celings? Lath/plaster directly on roof rafters? To hot roof it you need to eliminate airflow which with fiberglass batts is nearly impossible to do. Hot roof almost always = spray foam or rigid foam board under the roof sheeting

I would remove all the insulation from your roof, make sure the first floor ceiling insulation is good enough, make sure all the vertical knee walls are insulated with fiberglass batts on back side, then screw 1" of rigid foam board to your ceiling and recover with drywall. Should get you a R11 in your walls and R5 in the second story ceiling. Then get a ridge vent and make sure you have eave vents. Not perfect, but better then it is now.

With a super limited budget though, it might just worth being chilly.

 

[woodgeek]

Ok.
All attics look like a mess, but this one is also confusing...looks like in some places the attic floor is insulated and in others, the attic ceiling, and someplaces both.

Step 1: Unless there is a good reason, all the insulation on the 'ceiling' can be pulled down, and repurposed to insulating the floor. Wet insulation should be bagged and discarded. People get weird ideas and DIY insulation in attic in strange ways. All that poly sheeting has no function up there...I would just pull it out too.

Step 2: At a minimum, all regions of the floor should be minimally insulated....unfaced R-30 batts are CHEAP and easy to put in.
Step 2b: Tack up some FG batts on the walls separating heated space from attic space. Get batts with paper facing, and put the facing to the heated space, not that it matters much.

Step 3: Find large penetrations in attic floor that allow heated air up....look for dirty FG batts, and plug them. Google 'attic airsealing' techniques for options. This will require some digging under insulation in areas near framing partitions, plumbing stacks, chimneys, etc. This is also CHEAP material-wise and will be very effective. The condensation (if not a roof leak) is from conditioned (humid) air leaking up there....there must be some 'big holes' in the attic floor....seal those up, and voila...no more condensation and reduced energy bills.

Step 3b: make sure attic is vented somehow, at least a little bit.....someone might have covered the vents to try to save energy....this might have exacerbated the condensation problem.

The above is not too much effort or money and will have a great impact. This is all 'triage' and urgent/big bang for the buck for saving energy heating dollars. Could be a weekend or two.

If you are there longer...
Step 4: complete airsealing....seal small openings like recessed lights, ceiling fixtures, and framing top plates (the tops of interior walls).
Step 5: blow cellulose over the whole mess to a total insulation depth of 15-18" over the floor sheeting.
These two steps are better done by pros, unless you are very handy or broke.

My advice: get a good respirator....one with filter cartridges and valves, it might be $20 and will be way better than the paper masks.
Wear old clothes or buy a tyvek suit, and shower off after you leave the attic.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Hey thanks fellas. Sorry for the delay, on my days off I'm not always on the forums. Plus I realized how confusing this was and wanted to draw out a better floorplan. So here goes...

Drawn fairly closely to scale. In the original drawing I drew both bedrooms the same width for convenience (and to be honest for a long time I didn't even realize one was wider due to the way the closets and built in beds are positioned).

There are 2 bedrooms in the upstairs area, north and south (N-BR, S-BR). The N-BR is not as wide. It is the one that is plaster walls, without any insulation on the knee wall or ceiling. The S-BR, appears recently redone, with drywall, and is wider. This is also the one where they insulated everything (floor, knee wall, roof, and eaves) as well as put up plastic under the insulation that's under the roof/eaves.

Also, the old stairway that comes down from the N-BR cuts off a 5.5' section of the attic that is inaccessible. I assume no insulation. I forgot to draw it in, but there is a small doorway into the attic in the other side of the S-BR, so both sides of the attic are accessible except for the first 5.5' of the N-BR.

How tall are your celings? Lath/plaster directly on roof rafters? To hot roof it you need to eliminate airflow which with fiberglass batts is nearly impossible to do. Hot roof almost always = spray foam or rigid foam board under the roof sheeting

I would remove all the insulation from your roof, make sure the first floor ceiling insulation is good enough, make sure all the vertical knee walls are insulated with fiberglass batts on back side, then screw 1" of rigid foam board to your ceiling and recover with drywall. Should get you a R11 in your walls and R5 in the second story ceiling. Then get a ridge vent and make sure you have eave vents. Not perfect, but better then it is now.

With a super limited budget though, it might just worth being chilly.

No that's an idea I had not considered. The wall hieght is listed above, 6'7" in center and 4'6" at the wall in the uninsulated plaster N-BR. Tight, but I'm sure I could spare a couple inches.

Eave vents... well I'll have to crawl back around to be sure but I don't believe there are any. Could I just put a vent on the gable end on each side? I'll have to look into what's involved with installing a ridge vent. Unless I tear down the plaster walls the ridge is only going to be accessible from outside.

Ok.
All attics look like a mess, but this one is also confusing...looks like in some places the attic floor is insulated and in others, the attic ceiling, and someplaces both.

Yeah a confusing mess. But to summarize: all the attic floor is insulated (though some spots are rather lacking), that's it for the N-BR. Then the S-BR is insulated everywhere else (knee wall, roof, eaves).

Step 1: Unless there is a good reason, all the insulation on the 'ceiling' can be pulled down, and repurposed to insulating the floor. Wet insulation should be bagged and discarded. People get weird ideas and DIY insulation in attic in strange ways. All that poly sheeting has no function up there...I would just pull it out too.

I'm assuming most of the ceiling/roof insulation is wet. But I wonder the stuff in the 4" gap in-between the ceiling and roof if it can just be pulled out or does it tear?

Step 2: At a minimum, all regions of the floor should be minimally insulated....unfaced R-30 batts are CHEAP and easy to put in.
Step 2b: Tack up some FG batts on the walls separating heated space from attic space. Get batts with paper facing, and put the facing to the heated space, not that it matters much.

Got it. However, if placing the paper facing up against the interior wall how does one attach it. Normally I would staple it up against the studs but that would be 'underneath' in this orientation.

Step 3: Find large penetrations in attic floor that allow heated air up....look for dirty FG batts, and plug them. Google 'attic airsealing' techniques for options. This will require some digging under insulation in areas near framing partitions, plumbing stacks, chimneys, etc. This is also CHEAP material-wise and will be very effective. The condensation (if not a roof leak) is from conditioned (humid) air leaking up there....there must be some 'big holes' in the attic floor....seal those up, and voila...no more condensation and reduced energy bills.

Got it. However there isn't much up through the attic floor, the chimney is routed in the interior closet, the only thing (I think) that penetrates the attic is the downstairs bathroom venting. But I'll check and seal all these places. Seems like I'm getting drafts under/between baseboard and walls too.

Step 3b: make sure attic is vented somehow, at least a little bit.....someone might have covered the vents to try to save energy....this might have exacerbated the condensation problem.

Yeah the only venting I can find is the vented siding under the eaves outside, but on the inside I don't see it. There is just a big timber at the end but I haven't dug around close to the eave end yet. I'll have to take another look.

Thanks very much for reviewing my situation... sometimes I wonder if it would be easier just to tear out this 'upstairs' and instead finish the basement!

This alberta clipper really showed how uninsulated and drafty this house is. For about 2 days straight now I've been running the pellet stove on max (about 120 lbs in 25 hours) and keeping the wood insert (Jotul Rockland) stuffed and cruising 600+F. With wind chills down below zero lately, the average temp downstairs is probably mid 60's (including an heater heater in kitchen). Even in the same room as the pellet stove on max, the walls are measuring in the 50's with a few spots 40's or less. The one bedroom on the other side of the wall of the pellet stove was mid/upper 50's! I'm not sure if even the downstairs walls are insulated. I might be better off not sinking a dime into insulation and saving up for a down payment on a new place.

I shut down the pellet stove for daily cleaning last night, about 30-40 minutes, and in that time the stove room (wich was about 80 in proximity to the woodstove) dropped to low 60's, and never fully rebounded by the time I went to bed a few hours later. I slept on the couch in that room, almost withing arms reach of the stove, and had to use a heavy blanket since the cold air was moving right over me toward the stove. My face was about 4' from the stove and it was pretty cold feeling (had to pull the comforter around my head).

 

[brian89gp]

Eave vents... well I'll have to crawl back around to be sure but I don't believe there are any. Could I just put a vent on the gable end on each side? I'll have to look into what's involved with installing a ridge vent. Unless I tear down the plaster walls the ridge is only going to be accessible from outside.

Ridge vents are installed from the outside. Since the ceiling doesn't go all the way to the peak there might be enough room to do a few standard roof vents right at the peak and have a 4 gable vents, one on each side of the room on both ends of the house. Airflow would be through the gable vents, through the attic space behind the knee walls, up the rafter bays, then out the roof vents. Airflow gets the moisture out and keeps condensation and mold problems at bay.

Woodgeek has good idea's on the insulation. Fiberglass batts are cheap.

 

[johninwi]

I'd identify the worst area's for drafts and close them off (abandon) for the winter. Towels under doors, plastic window sheeting and so on. Can you live without the second floor till spring? Make yourself as comfortable as possible till it warms up.
I have an Aunt that rented house's much like yours,or worse, she'd build a "dog house" she called it in the living room and heat it, the dog house was 8 sheets of paneling, 2 per side a whopping 64 sq ft of room. She liked brandy and reading so was quite content, oh yea, and a dozen cats too.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Ridge vents are installed from the outside. Since the ceiling doesn't go all the way to the peak there might be enough room to do a few standard roof vents right at the peak and have a 4 gable vents, one on each side of the room on both ends of the house.

I'll plan on doing something like this, just need to figure out if I can do the roof venting. There would only be 2 gable vents - the south end of the building. The north end adjoins the second story addition (see very first pic in this thread)

I'd identify the worst area's for drafts and close them off (abandon) for the winter. Towels under doors, plastic window sheeting and so on. Can you live without the second floor till spring? Make yourself as comfortable as possible till it warms up.
I have an Aunt that rented house's much like yours,or worse, she'd build a "dog house" she called it in the living room and heat it, the dog house was 8 sheets of paneling, 2 per side a whopping 64 sq ft of room. She liked brandy and reading so was quite content, oh yea, and a dozen cats too.

I really thought about shutting down the entire side of the house. If it were just me, I don't really need 2400+ sqft. But I'll have my son 50% of the time, so need some kind of second bedroom. Though the two sides of the house are similar in size, there is only one bedroom on the new side. I could potentially shut down just the upstairs for winter, but it gets pretty hot up there in summer too. I could utilize the bedroom on the main level as the second bedroom, but was really wanting to move my office in there from my unfinished, cold, and damp basement. The main level walls are either uninsulated as well or just really drafty. But other than trying to seal up drafts I probably wont do anything major to the main floor.

So the most difficult part in my mind is the ceilings... putting FG bats on the attic floor and wall should be easy. So far the only real suggestion I have for the ceilings is to put 1" foam board over my plaster ceiling and recover with drywall. I may do this but If I were to go ahead and tear down all the plaster, how would that change my options? Could I maybe put 2" foam board and then drywall over that? Not sure if I want to give up much more space than that. Is it worth tearing down all that plaster just to gain maybe an inch of insulation? I'm going to have to tear down the plaster wall in the cut off 5.5' section to gain access to the attic space there anyhow, and I've debated removing the old unused stairway. Perhaps I should just gut the entire second floor and start from scratch.

If you are there longer...
Step 4: complete airsealing....seal small openings like recessed lights, ceiling fixtures, and framing top plates (the tops of interior walls).
Step 5: blow cellulose over the whole mess to a total insulation depth of 15-18" over the floor sheeting.
These two steps are better done by pros, unless you are very handy or broke.

Currently, the attic floor is only 3.5' wide on each side of the 23' width of the floor (if i redid the other bedroom to match), would it really be worth putting all that extra insulation in just two 3.5' strips of the attic? The ceiling is going to be limited to much less so I can't see putting a huge amount of insulation over a small area to be much benefit. Would also make it very difficult to get into attic since that would be almost half the height of the opening you'd have to crawl through and I doubt I'd be able to get around in the attic with that much insulation. Wouldn't be very much room left for ventilation either. I don't see needing to get into the attic again once finished though, so if putting that much into those areas would help I'd still consider it.

 

[woodgeek]

Honestly, I'm still not clear on the geometry. I don't know why you would ever insulate the roofline in an unused attic space, rather than the attic floor and sidewalls (if any).

You are describing 'knee walls' which are a bear to airseal and to insulate. The more important thing is to make sure the framing is not wide open to the outside air. The way kneewalls are usually built leaves the joist cavities under the conditioned space open to the unconditioned attic. Just stuffing something non air permeable into those joist cavities could be huge (and fast/cheap).

You should google and read about airsealing kneewalls and cape houses to get your bearings. There are lots of resources on line.

Once their sealed, many people just have the whole space filled with cellulose.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Honestly, I'm still not clear on the geometry. I don't know why you would ever insulate the roofline in an unused attic space, rather than the attic floor and sidewalls (if any).

It is a used space (bedroom). Without the roofline insulated, like half of it currently is, then the heat goes straight up into the atmosphere? My IR gun on the ceiling of the bedrooms often reads 50's (or colder) in the winter and over 100 in the summer. If I insulated the floor, it would completely cut off the bedroom from heat, not to mention I'd have to pull up carpet and plywood. Maybe this diagram will get us on the same page, since I might not be using correct terminology...

So this is a cross section of the upstairs bedroom. The red lines are the 'attic' space that I would insulate (probably just FG batts). The floors already are, but one bedroom has nothing on the vertical part of the red line (I assume that's what your calling a knee wall?). My question is the yellow line, the ceiling, which is nothing more than plaster, 4" air gap, and metal roof. And its probably close to 20 feet of surface across.

 

[woodgeek]

That clarifies.

Read this: http://www.energyauditingblog.com/the-difficulties-in-heating-cape-cod-style-houses/

I assume you have an arrangement like a 'Cape Cod' house in some areas, and a more conventional attic elsewhere in the floorplan.

I guess my message is that airsealing it is tricky, but doable DIY if you are willing to get dirty, and this will both save a bundle on heat AND eliminate condensation issues, and perhaps other things (like mold, ice dams). That has to come first, before insulation.

With a metal roof you can probably not vent the cathedral sections to get lower energy losses (you'l prob be R-3 if airsealed, R-1 if not) even with an empty cavity.

IMO filling the cavity is a pro job, probably cellulose of some sort of cavity fill foam. Are you sure there is nothing in the cathedral sections (you can see up the space to the ridge?).

 

[OhioBurner©]

IMO filling the cavity is a pro job, probably cellulose of some sort of cavity fill foam. Are you sure there is nothing in the cathedral sections (you can see up the space to the ridge?).

For the newer refinished bedroom I am guessing there is fiberglass batts up there, they put it everywhere else, but I have no way of verifying. And most of the other fiberglass that is against the metal roof seems to be damp. I was planning on attempting to remove it all, though I'm doubting I could successfully pull it out through the small cavity between the roof rafters.

For the older plaster room, I did not see all the way to the peak (I can go back in and try) but I doubt there is anything up there. And I am guessing there is no easy DIY way of getting insulation up there without tearing down the existing plaster (which I may do).

I did do some reading on one website last night about insulating knee walls, and I see know the air sealing problem underneath them with heat going out through the floor into the attic space. I'll have to take a closer look next time I am in there. I don't think there is any actual 'airsealing', looks to me like they just have fiberglass batts on the floor up to the knee wall with no actual sealing. One side actually has plywood down that I might have to see if I can pull up. I'll read up on your link and more maybe tonight.

As for sealing the top versus venting... it would probably simply things a little not having to vent the ridge, but I can't see just a gable end vent on one side of the attic accomplishing much ventilation at all. Of course I currently have no venting at all...