I want to insulate my house. It was built in 1914. Framed with 2×4’s,not sure if it’s balloon framed or not. I will probably use cellulose. Ineed some tips as I have never blown insulation in walls.
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What's the exterior like? Siding? I think the standard retrofit procedure is to remove a course of siding and drill holes in each stud bay to blow it in. Is this what you were planning? When you are blowing it in be careful you don't blast the sheetrock (or probably plaster) off the walls.
You should take a look at the forum on http://www.oldhouseweb.com, lots of people over there have tackled this.
David
Plaster was't used much on the inside here. We have 1x8 on the walls on the inside. thenthey covered it with cloth wall paper. Wood lap siding on the outside.
use a two hole blow in every stud bayyou can blow it from the inside or the outsideuse a snake wire to probe for hidden firestops & blockinguse a smaller diameter hose to get ito the bayenjoy.... blowing cells is zen-likeMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
thanks for the input. Whenyou say 2 holes,do you mean 2 at the top or 1 at the top and 1 half way up the wall
1 @ 16 from the top & 1 @ 16" from the bottomMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Taunton has a very good book in their "how to build like a pro" set of books about insulating the house (something like "How to insulate and weatherize your house").
I just finished this in my own house. It was very time consuming but doable and it made an immediate improvement in room comfort. I did it knowing we'd need a new A/C unit and wanted to be able to go with a smaller A/C to save energy, not to mention cut down on heat radiating through the walls. Calculations showed I could get by with a 1/2 ton smaller unit. Even with the current A/C, though, I could get the house down about 2 degrees cooler and it feels the same in all parts of the house (my den, farthest from the A/C, always needed a window unit because the central just couldn't cool it). I am anxious to see what it does for winter comfort.
the time consuming part is getting off the siding and drilling the holes. The book covers how to remove different types of siding.
I don't want to disagree with Mike Smith, but I will pass along what the book said to do, which I did. According to the book, assuming you have an open stud bay from floor to ceiling (no horizontal bits)you only need one hole IF you are using a long 1 1/4" to 1 1/2" tube to pump in the insulation. If there are horizontal pieces, you'll need one hole for every "bay" that's created by the horizontal parts. If you aren't using the long tube (and I would highly recommed you do use the long tube) you need a hole near top and a hole near bottom of each bay. There is a video on ThisOldHouse.com that shows Tom Silva doing it with the no-skinny-hose two-hole method, but the book insists that this way won't dense pack the material as well. With the tube, you drill a hole about 1/3 of the bay size from the bottom. Run the tube up to the top of the bay and start blowing. Some will fall to the bottom but some will stay up top. Eventually (it takes a few minutes depending on the size of the bay) the flow of cellulose will back up and the blower will whine. This means the part where the end of the hose is has packed pretty tightly. You start pulling the hose out about 8 inches at a time to relieve the pressure, then repeat when it starts to back up again. When you run out of hose, shove the hose down into the bottom of the bay and repeat. The bottom will have lots of cellulose that fell down and won't take as long. You will feel like you can't push the tube down into what's there but you can. If you don't, you won't dense pack it enough.
I rented the blower from Home Depot. I tried to rent one from Lowes but they didn't have the reducing nozzle or a way to decrease the amount of flow through the tube (you can't pump as much as you would blowing an attic or it will clog the smaller hose). The big green machine from Depot had both of these things. They may use different models where you are, of course.
Good luck. It's hard dirty work but well worth it.
I believe that Mike is correct. While the books are a good resource, there is nothing like on the job experience.
I will second the 2 hole method, in my experience it is necessary to make sure you have covered all that is necessary!
I don't know about how many Mike has done but I have done alot more than 1 house!
I certainly meant no disrespect to pros who obviously do this much more that I do. I was trying to pass along some information, homeowner to homeowner. As I said, I didn't want to disagree; I did want to provide some more details and share how it went with my own project. If it's not acceptable for homeowners to do this, then I'll stop posting.Since the book is published by Fine Homebuilding and written by a full-time insulation/weatherizing guy, I considered it to be a credible source. I also found a number of sources online written by insulation pros describing the same technique. I found other sources that said to use the two-hole method, but weighing the options I opted for the one-hole with hose. I calculated beforehand the number of bags it should take to dense-pack the walls to make sure I was getting enough in there, and I was pretty close.
Edited 6/16/2008 12:42 pm ET by lojoma
How would you deal with a balloon framed house where the beginning of the joist bay is open to the stud cavity that you are filling? Wouldn't a ton of the cellulose work its way into the ceiling cavity of the room that you're at, wasting time and material?
Absolutely ... plus you never know what else might happen. When blowing my walls, I had a hole/opening into my partial basement. Seemed to take a long time to fill the cavity ... upon investigation, I had a LARGE pile of insulation in the basement. Not a show stopper/relatively easy to clean up, but it was a surprise!
Solution? Not sure. Possibly foam at the perimeter, but that too, not guaranteed a fix. Maybe someone else will pipe in w/ a trick.
All are welcome.
Your opinion is as valid as anybody else's. Heck the pros never seem to agree anyhow.
i also have been thinking about doing this on my house. is there any issues with nob and tube wiring. most of it has been replaced and redone over the years but i.m sure there are still a few hot lines in the house in places i don.t know about. its an 1890 balloon frame. how would i keep from the insulation from going in between the floor joists when filling on the second floor down towards the first? thanks for all the help
if i were doing it, i'd get creative
maybe pop the baseboard and reach down and block the joist bay with something...freddy L used a lot of trash bags stuffed with fiberglass insulation i might try that or maybe pieces of foam held in place with expanding gun foamMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore