more insulating when doing repairs

mountainmoma's picture

There are often funny places in a house which are not insulated or air sealed. Plenums. Or my stair way landing, which is like a Plenum, but up from the floor....I had to replace some siding, so that became an opportunity to access that otherwise enclosed space.

The pink insulation is the new stuff.

The stairway landing is in a corner, the 2 outerwalls under the landing had no interior drywall or insulation on those parts of the outside wall. This can be alright if the builder decides that the area is "unheated space" like an attic, and puts an air barrier and insulation on the little interior stub walls and under the landing floor. But, that wasnt the case. This happens alot with plenums, little dropped ceiling areas too, there may be no barrier established.

It is very tight to try to get into such a tight space on teh inside, so siding replacement which had to happen in that area gave an opportunity to access the space.

First, my friend crawled in from the outside where the opening was large enough, and insulated the other outside wall area, and then put on a piece of drywall, and caulked all the edges of the drywall. I painted the drywall from teh outside with a small roller brigh and an extension handle. The we put pieces of 2x4 blocking in each stud bay in the open wall, and cut a piece of drywall for each bay. I painted these. We screwed them in, painted side facing to the inside of the house. Then they were caulked. Then the insulation was set in from the outside, like you see in the photo, paper side in.

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mountainmoma's picture

I will make a vent opening for the area behind the lower steps, because all areas should vent to somewhere.

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mountainmoma's picture

before the work was done. over those openings was tar paper and plywood siding, open like that to the inside. You can kind of see my friends feet hanging out on the right, and a piece of insulation I had cut and was handing in to him to get that other outer corner wall that was not open.

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mountainmoma's picture

took a long time to get it all closed up again. will paint it at some point to match

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Glad things are moving along on the project.

lathechuck's picture

If you have an infrared thermal camera (or can borrow one), I suppose that's the best way to look for insulation flaws and air leaks. But I have only a pistol-grip infrared thermometer, so I systematically measured the temperatures of the ceiling of my house on a particularly cold day. That worked well enough to reveal an under-insulated section of the attic. I then had enough motivation to crawl through a small passage, pushing and/or pulling fiberglass batts with me, to fix the problem. Oddly enough, icesicles stopped forming on that part of the eaves!

My one-story "ranch" house is somewhat L-shaped, and it was built with roof sheathing over the entire long side of the L before the roof of the short side was framed and sheathed. Then, just enough of the now covered long-side roof was cut out to allow access to the attic of the short side. Access, that is, for the highly-motivated, willing to pull aside the main part's isulation and belly-crawl into the short part.

mountainmoma's picture

yes, I also have a remote infrared thermometer, and that can help show hidden cold spots like this area. I also had a free blower door test done at some point a number of years ago and paying attention to moving cobwebs etc... as that went on also showed issues. A candle or incense on a really windy day in suspected spots can also show areas to caulk.

I am glad you found one of your hidden areas too ! If we all go out and look for these, the payback is great. Very little money on caulk or insulation for much greater comfort