Retrofit insulation?

[bolson]

Dear Dr Lj,
My old house is cold and heated by expensive oil, I believe the best course of action is to improve its insulation. Blowing in insulating fluff into the attic seems like it should be an easy win. I hear this can be done to the walls too, but is somewhat more involved as it may include peeling off parts of the siding and cutting holes to blow in through. I just had another thought, take off all the siding and add a few inches of insulative thickness to all the outer walls. This of course seems like a somewhat radical measure. Any ideas on if this is otherwise a reasonable idea? Anyone else heard of this or other thins being done?

Comments

[chamois.livejournal.com]

Adding foam insulation on the outside is fairly common. However, you can then only put vinyl siding on because everything else is too heavy to hang off of long nails through the foam.

[beah.livejournal.com]

You could email mrf_arch and ask him about it. He's a professional architect.

[devreux.livejournal.com]

The century-old Victorian I live in had blow-in insulation added in the walls a few years ago, and it certainly makes a difference. (Having windows less than a century old would make even more of a difference, but I digress. And I should just get up on a ladder and put plastic over them instead of whining.)

The blow-in insulation can be done entirely from the interior of the house -- that's how it was handled here. It involves drilling holes through the drywall/plaster/what have you about 2" in diameter, one close to the floor and another close to the ceiling, between every pair of studs. They will plaster over the holes. After it's finished, you will need to entirely repaint or re-wallpaper every room, because there's no way you can cover up all those holes and make it look good. But it's less drastic than drilling holes through the exterior sheathing of the house, and less drastic than gutting the interior of your house down to the studs, installing fiberglass batting, and then re-drywalling every room ...

(Although that latter option would also let you replace the inevitable rat's-nest of frighteningly ancient wiring. Knob-and-tube, anyone? ~shudder~ Don't laugh, some of the older places around here still have remnants! On the other hand, maybe it's more comforting to just try not to think about your wiring too hard ...)

BTW, vinyl siding isn't all it's cracked up to be -- it really doesn't have a very long functional life, according to architect friends of mine. If you stay in the condo more than a decade, you might have to replace it.

[soong.livejournal.com]

The current vinyl siding looks fine for now. If it lasts 5-10 years until I move on that will be fine.

Cutting holes between all my studs and repainting everything is a lot more work than I want right now. I think I'll just get some blown into the attic.

This place just had a fairly extensive remodel, the walls look nice. I just wish the walls had ethernet wiring in them, and I think I can achieve that with a little wire pulling just between places where I want jacks.

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

the attic insulation should take care of 90% of your heat loss. We are having our walls done over Xmas; I can let you know then if it makes a notable difference to the warmth in the house.

apparently having it blown in from the outside is easier than it sounds - the guys says it should take just a few days to do our house.

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

oh, and are you already using Mass Energy for your oil heat? we are getting our biodiesel from them and it's pretty awesome.

[eramundo.livejournal.com]

blowing into the walls shouldn't be a big deal even with the hole drilling, they'd lift the outer layer of siding, drill underneath, and then bung/re-lay the siding so you'd never know. Doing it yourself would be cheaper, but probably require scaffold to do it right :-D.

the attic thing you could do yourself although it's a bit messy :-)