Insulation

I talked a bit about insulation in the last post.  This was a great milestone to hit as it now means the house can be somewhat livable to work in.  Only too bad it didn't happen in November before it was 150 below zero for 3 months!

The ceilings in the house are divided into two types: the cathedral great room and the truss framed roofs in the other sections (Master suite wing and upper level).  These are handled differently for insulation.  The great room gets 4" of closed cell foam sprayed directly on the underside of the roof deck, and then the remaining 10" of space are filled with dense pack cellulose giving the roof assembly something on the order of R-60.  It is important to seal a cathedral ceiling like this with spray foam to avoid moisture/condensation problems in the future.  This is the reason for spraying the closed cell foam first.  The dense pack is to gain extra insulation at lower cost.  If you want the building science details behind it, drop me a line.  Otherwise everyone's eyes are probably glazed over by now as it is...

Here are some shots of the great room insulation in process.  The first shot you can see the one side of the Big Beam is done with foam, and the other side was started.  This was the end of day 1 which included a lot of prep and setup time.

Here both sides are done foaming and they have put up netting on the first side that was already done with foam.  This netting is air permeable so when they blow the cellulose in, the air that is used to blow it can come out through the netting to allow the cellulose to settle fully in.

 Here you can see the netting is all complete, and they have finished blowing in cellulose.  The holes near the ridge beams are where they stuck the hose in to fill it up.  If there was an obstruction, they poked in another hole to finish it off.  I placed speaker boxes in the ceilings for future speakers for a general sound system or possibly for surround sound in the TV area.  I just made these boxes out of some sheet foam.

They also foamed in under all floors to help the radiant heat go the direction it is supposed to (up).  One thing that also had to happen was the duct work that was in the garage space needed to be foamed in with closed cell first to seal it in.  This is the first picture. Note the ducts covered in foam above the red steel beam.

 Then since the tuck under garage is considered unconditioned space, they foamed in 10" of the open cell foam for an R50 floor in the great room (directly over the garage).  The open cell is really wild to watch them place it as it expands an incredible amount - a lot more than the closed cell.  In the first pic you can see the main trunk duct below the trusses at the very bottom of the pic that was already sealed with closed cell.  That was later enclosed in a soffit.

There was a whole lotta foam going on for a few days...

As for the Truss ceilings, the original plan was to just blow in cellulose.  After talking with the insulation guys, and thinking it over, it made a lot of sense to first put down a seal coat of closed cell foam first on top of the ceiling drywall so everything would be totally air tight.  No sense making the rest of the house perfect and leaving this without a good seal.  So they did that first.  But there was a wrinkle.  I had been putting up plastic vapor barrier on the upper floor while they were working elsewhere in the house.  Once I got that done was when we discussed foaming it first.  And the guy told me the plastic was not very compatible with the foam so it was better to leave it out.  So after nicely covering the entire ceiling, I tore it all out.  I love tearing work out - NOT!  But it will be better in the long run and only wasted $50 of poly, so such is life...  Here it was before I tore it down.  Figured it was worth a pic at least...

More radiant tubing next