Chapter 4a. Ideas For Installing Insulation

We've come a long way since they used to pump sawdust into the walls of a house in an attempt to get a little difference between inside and outside temperatures. New insulation materials designed for installing insulation are highly effective.

Let's talk about them a bit. Whether you use loose fill, blanket, batting, rigid or foil type insulation depends entirely upon the job, and to a degree, upon family finances. For example, if the walls of the attic have already been closed in, your insulating "out' is to have a company drive up in a big truck and blow loose fill insulation into the cavity. If the attic does not as yet have a finished floor, it's an even simpler matter to dump the loose fill out of a large paper sack and rake it level in between the floor joints. However, with most jobs, you will probably use blanket, batting or foil.

When insulation first came on the scene 2 in. in walls and ceilings was ptretty standard. Later this figure was upped to 4 in. for ceilings and 2 in. for walls. The tally is still rising. Most authorities now recommend a full 6 in. in the ceiling, 4 in. in the walls and 2 in. under the floor (assuming you have some sort of crawl space below).

One more fact about insulation. Most of the blanket or batting types come with built-in vapor barriers. The purpose of this is to keep the excess moisture, that inevitably seems to accumulate in every household, from moving outward through the walls and saturating the insulation. Wet insulation is no insulation. And so most materials come with a vaporproof layer on one side. When you put up the stuff. it's very important to make sure that this surface faces in toward the house. The side of the insulation without the vapor barrier faces outward.

Installation

Before installing insulation, make sure how much insulation you need. Just measure from floor to ceiling and multiply this by the number of "bays" in between the studs. Add about 20 per cent for waste. If all this seems a little complicated, just measure the room and dump this information into the dealer's lap. Let him do the pencil work. If you're dealing with a local merchant, you may be able to buy more insulation than you think you need, but arrange to get credit for any unopened bales you return. Most lumberyards and building supply companies will lend you a stapler when you buy the material. This handy tool is essential when you're putting up insulation. The unit shown in the photos is a Bostich T5 gun. Other firms turn out similar devices. Swingline is one of them.

After you've plunked down your hard-earned cash for extra thick insulation, you may be slightly upset when you open the first bale. Don't fret. To cut down on shipping bulk, the manufacturers usually compress the insulation into the smallest size possible. Within an hour or so it'll swell back to the thickness you paid for.

Set up a little homemade assembly line so to speed the task. Measure the distance from wall to floor and add about 4-6 in., then cut eight or ten lengths of insulation to this dimension. Some types of insulation can be sliced with a sharp knife. If this doesn't work, trim the batting to size with a large pair of heavy kitchen shears or even tin snips. Fold a couple inches over at one end of the strip and fasten this to the plate.

There's one very important technique in installing insulation. Each strip is fitted into place and held on all four sides by the studs, plate and shoe. However, it must be set within this space. To be most effective, insulation should have a little air space on either side of it. For this reason, you attach it to the sides of the studs, and not the face. Since most insulation comes with a flange on either side, it's a simple matter to attach the strip in position.

A stapler is really essential for this job. These handy tools come in two varieties. Most common is what's called a gun tacker. Each time you squeeze the handle on this gismo, it drives a staple into place and bam, bam,

bam, the job goes very swiftly. Also used for this purpose is a staple hammer. This gadget looks like a stapler attached to the end of a handle and you swing it just like a regular hammer. Each time you hit the surface, it automatically drives a staple. It's less tiring to use and a little bit quicker, although actually, it's a little harder to achieve accuracy. If you miss, you tear through the vapor barrier, so toss your own coin, please. Whichever type you use, load it up with A-in. staples and drive one into place about every 6 in. all the way around the strip of insulation. When you're tacking onto the shoe, again double under the end of the strip and fasten through both thicknesses.

Insulating the Attic

When you're insulating the walls and        roof in the attic, don't carry the batting all the way up to the peak and down. It's very important to keep an air space at the top. The easiest way is to attach collar joints. These make the attic space look like the letter A. They are nothing but 2x4s fastened horizontally to span the slanting roof                 timbers. Just make sure you fasten them up high enough so that you retain head-room. The insulation gets fastened up the wall, carried up the slanting roof until you come to the collar joints. Then carry across the horizontal 2x4s and down on the other side. To get full benefit from this maneuver, you ought to have louvers at the very peak of the house siding, just under the roof at either end. Then, in summer time, you'll have a movement of air through this little triangular space and the room will stay much more comfortable.

Mineral Wool Insulation Assn. Staff spaces between rough framing and jambs and sills of windows and doors with loose insulation.

In about two minutes time, you can make a simple gadget that will speed up the job of installing insulation. This is a T support. Just cut a 20-in. piece of light wood and nail a longer piece to it in the center at right angles. Then (as you can see by the photo) you can use this to support the loose end of the batting until you get a chance to staple it in place.

Up until now. we've been dealing with spacing that's relatively standard. Unhappily. this isn't always the case and you'll probably get into some narrow spots or peculiarly shaped sections. Dealing with these taken a Hole know how, but here it is. If the "bay" is just 3-4 in. narrower than standard, compress the strip of insulation slightly, push it into place and staple it up. In a case of a really narrow strip, say only 6 in. or so wide, the process is a little more complicated. Measure and then cut a strip of insulation 3-4 in. wider than the area it will have to fit. Pull out some of the insulating material along one side, but leave the front and back covering intact. Double over the edges of the cover to form a flange and then staple this narrow strip in place.

Occasionally you'll come upon a spot that is so impossibly shaped that even this method won't work. Don't fuss over these areas. Instead, rip open a batting, loosely pack the insulation into the cavity and then staple some of the vapor barrier onto the face of the studs to hold it in place.

Styrofoam

You may be familiar with insulation material called Styrofoam. This is a white spongy plastic. You've probably seen a good deal of this around Christmas time made up into various ornaments or decorative items. Well, the same stuff is also available in large size sheets and it forms quite a decent insulating material. This is a comparatively new development and you may be interested because it makes a quick and easy way to insulate and then finish a cement wall. Here's the technique.

The insulation material comes in big sheets, 2 ft. wide and 6 ft. long in a standard 2-in. thickness. It's light weight because of the foamed construction, and you can actually lift an entire stack of these sheets big enough to cover a basement wall. If necessary, trim the plastic to size using a large carving knife. This stuff is so soft you can chew irregular shaped hunks out with your teeth if you get impatient.

One at a time, cement these sheets up to the wall using the, standard black gummy adhesive designed for this purpose. According to the manufacturer's instructions, (and for your information that's Dow Chemical Company) you just dab several globs of mastic about the size of a walnut onto the back surface of a sheet and then push this insulation material into position.

A new development is Styrofoam applied to masonry walls to serve both as insulation and plaster base.

Wet plaster can be troweled directly onto the Styroioam. or plasterboard can be glued up to form wall.

This method of installing insulation has an advantage that you can put almost any wall surface you please on top without further preparation. For example, if you want a plaster wall, just start troweling the wet plaster directly onto the exposed face of the Stryofoam. If you'd prefer a plasterboard treatment, simply glue this in place using more of that same black, nasty mastic. Then tape the seams, and paint or paper. Plywood and most types of thin wall paneling get applied in the same way. Just glue them up.

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