I am doing some design work for someone and they currently have an enclosed porch built on brick piers. What she would like to do is tear down the porch and make it an additional room to her house. In other words, she would like to use the same footprint but make it a heated room and open the wall up into her house. My question is can I use a brick pier or concrete columns to support the room? She doesn’t want a crawl space. She would like to keep it open underneath and put lattice around the base to use as a storage area. Any tips would be helpful. Thanks.
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If there will be access room under the new floor deck, I would have an insulation contractor that does sprayed urethane, foam the cavities to a depth of three inches.
Then I would sheath the whole bottom with something like 3/8 CDX plywood.
What about any ductwork that goes in?
OK, let's get down to it. What kind of heating climate exists, where this work is to be done?
The location is southeastern Michigan.
Will the depth of your floor joists permit three inches of foam insulation, then the supply air ducts, and still have a below-flush condition, so you can sheath it all off?
If the working clearance is OK, and you cannot find a foam contractor, you can cut and fit a 2" thickness of foam board, then another thickness of 1". Doing this, you might want to use a small handheld foaming gun to seal the margins and joints, and "glue" it in place.
Either way, insulate first, then cut through and install ducting, then seal around the ducting penetration.
Well, It's a 9' x 18' room so I was going to use 2 x 10 floor joists. I'm not quite sure if that would leave me enough room. I like the idea of using rigid insulation. I should probably wrap the ductwork to eh?
Yes, of course. Wrap dem ducts.
Are you doing A/C, too? If not, you might want to consider heating this room some other way than with the forced air.
I don't deal much with forced air, but I wonder why you would put the ducting outside the insulation package. I think i'd want to run that sheet metal first and then foam it in. Less heat loss in the delivery systme.I have done additions like this one with insulated floor and sheathing covering the bottoms. No problems with it.
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I think i'd want to run that sheet metal first and then foam it in.
Absolutely.