not so cold.

Today, temps made it up into the 40s. A very welcome relief. Very nice day.

The sand-filled floor actually broke freezing today, maybe I'll be able to run some water through it in a few days. I'm getting a little desperate, may end up kludging something together with a copper heat exchanger and some sand on the woodstove, the pump out of the waterfall, a water barrel in the basement, , ,

Enough of that.

Today I kept after the insulation. Got one section of the roof radiant barrier done. parts of that were kinda hateful, but that's okay. I'm learning a great deal about what constitutes 'good enough' in the world of frame carpentry. Fairly, there is only so much you can do with what passes for 'premium' certified lumber.

enough, moving along.

So, remember those crazy exterior walls?



yes, the ones with the wall-inside-a-wall? Well, now I need to actually insulate them. I've pondered all sorts of things. Initially, I was going to install a vapor seal, and then blow in insulation. However, no matter how you cut it, blown in insulation settles, and in order to get a really good setup to do it, I'd need the walls to be a couple of inches thicker than they already are. This would begin to seriously eat up the interior floor space. Fact of Life, interior floor space is practically the only thing folks care about when valuing a home. The fact that walls a seriously thick because they are seriously insulated means little. yes, it means something, but banks and realtors could care less.

Moving along, Dealing with the Wous, (walls of unusual size) has had me puzzled for a while, so I bought some materials and did an experiment.



Here we have insulation batts for a 2x6 wall, even though the old exterior wall is a 2x4 wall. A 2x4 wall uses 3-1/2 batts, maxed out at R13. My walls are deeper, so I figured I'd give these R19 batts a go.



I'm getting good expansion into the 'dead' space between the two walls with these 6-1/2" batts. yeah, that's right, these are supposed to be 6-1/2, not 5-1/2. The instructions call for the installer to compress them back into the 5-1/2 space for R18. >shrug<.

Someone is now saying "Wait! Wait! where is your vapor barrier, either you put the batts in backwards (We've all seen it) OR that is unfaced insulation"
How right you are!

First, prepare our trusty machine:



This much thicker material requires 2 passes. Blade must be raised and re-squared, then cut about 5/8ths the way through the top, flip the work end-over-end, and run it back through joining the cuts.




And there's your vapor barrier. After they are all in place, will go back over them and seal up all the gaps with that expanding foam. But I'll use the blue 'window' stuff that won't deform anything.

I prepared the cavities in the exterior wall by cleaning them out, vacuuming them, and caulking all the joints to the siding. Should be quite tight.

I'll be pulling this stuff back out and applying 'Bora-care' to the baseboards before sealing the wall.

So, that's an R10 foam board, overtop of 6-inch to 6.5 inches of unfaced R19 batt. With NO wall stud bridging. This wall should outperform any 'standard' R30 wall out there. Be much more quiet as well.

Sharp eyed folks are asking themselves, "But where are your services?". Big hint. An outlet is a hole in the wall. It just is. So is a window, but they are already there. All services, electrical, plumbing, network, etc will go on interior walls.