Home Improvement

This was cool. I did blown in insulation just in time for the hot weather down here in the south. It was extremely hot yesterday and even hotter today.

I installed a device called sense in my panelboard so I can track energy usage.


Yesterday I installed the installation took two people like 3 hours blew in to like r30 or so. Used the atticat pink fiberglass and you get a free machine rental from Home Depot.

Check the two days of ac out compared. Decent little energy reduction especially considering today was a hotter day.

I found out my stupid in-laws left the garage door open half the day today too lovely. We have 7 people in our 2500 sq ft house atm. If I can keep my bill reasonable with 7 people I’ll be amazed.

I have a lot of work to do still to finish air sealing the house and keeping humidity in check. I am having to run a dehu regularly atm. Main problem remaining is slope of dirt near house when it rains.

Total job cost me 500 or so.

Today after insulation on the hotter day. The big bump at the end is because I said fuck it and turned the ac down to 74. I have an awesome fan in my room and it feels great at 74. The haiku l series fan.


Yesterday with hot weather (not as bad as today)

Xadion said:

So... doing blown in insulation yourself...

Anyone have, erm...ideas or thoughts about having it cover your AC ductwork? As mentioned - I have yuge duct board throughout the entire attic in the center - making navigation of my attic nigh impossible... I should take some pics...its insane... but apparently it is really good stuff.. I get "very good" level of temp loss from out of handler temp to out of vent temp - so it is all in good working order.

Was wondering if it would be any use to just blow the crap everywhere I can get to... would that make a later mess huge and annoying? can you blow it over current rolled insulation?

offtopicrant....
Stupid 4500 windows...

still rustled about it...but its just...one of those things, it needs to be done, and it needs to be done well- and the product I am buying does seem nice. I did email the people my parents used (7500$ for about double, so I am higher a little) - and gave them measurements and said "how much" and they didnt even email me back...so pfft... that and the place I signed with already did the hard credit check hit for their 6mo same as cash. so... here we go 4500$ windows!

Click to expand...

Yes it’s perfectly fine to have blown in over your ducts and existing batt insulation. The only no no with insulation is placing backed insulation over existing insulation because the vapor barrier creates a condensation layer trapped between the two sets and causes mold.
Blown in is perfectly fine and yes it improved efficiency for ducts.

If your already well insulated though insulation efficiency is a decaying exponential in terms of gains. In other words going from r30 to r60 is like an extremely minor reduction in your energy bill. If your going from barely any or shitty insulation into the r30s it’s great.

If your really worried about your windows you can always recaulk them or add interior or exterior storm windows and get the same effect much cheaper.

Good luck!

It doesn’t hurt to mark out your major stuff up there or map it out before you blow in insulation as brutul mentioned

Xadion said:

So... doing blown in insulation yourself...

Anyone have, erm...ideas or thoughts about having it cover your AC ductwork? As mentioned - I have yuge duct board throughout the entire attic in the center - making navigation of my attic nigh impossible... I should take some pics...its insane... but apparently it is really good stuff.. I get "very good" level of temp loss from out of handler temp to out of vent temp - so it is all in good working order.

Was wondering if it would be any use to just blow the crap everywhere I can get to... would that make a later mess huge and annoying? can you blow it over current rolled insulation?

offtopicrant....
Stupid 4500 windows...

still rustled about it...but its just...one of those things, it needs to be done, and it needs to be done well- and the product I am buying does seem nice. I did email the people my parents used (7500$ for about double, so I am higher a little) - and gave them measurements and said "how much" and they didnt even email me back...so pfft... that and the place I signed with already did the hard credit check hit for their 6mo same as cash. so... here we go 4500$ windows!

Click to expand...

As Cukernaut mentioned, practically speaking, you’ll never realize financial gains by adding more insulation on top of existing insulation. Spending $500 to go from R30 to R60 might save you a few cents per month in energy usage.

Noodleface said:

I mentioned this before, but my 1st floor gets extremely cold in the winter. It's not drafts from the windows, and we do put a barrier underneath the doors, but still I feel like most of the cold air is creeping up from my basement. The ceiling isn't insulated int he basement at all and I have wood floors so my guess is it's creeping up that way. Would insulating the ceiling in the basement provide any benefit at all? I'm also going to look at better insulating the windows and doors in the basement to help it out. We have two cheap wooden doors leading out to the yard, and they're probably letting in most of the cold. I have no idea what to do there though.

Click to expand...

Best thing to do here would be to shoot it with an IR camera on a cold day with the heat turned up so that you see exactly what the issue is. You can rent ir cameras or buy a “cheap one” for 200 or so.

You don’t want to go chasing the wrong problem and blow a bunch of money.

I’ve seen cold and heat conduit through the joists and thus insulation may not even help there. Almost impossible to give a default answer to.

Weather stripping and caulking your doors is always good and cheap/easy.

It’s also worth mentioning that heat naturally rises and sometimes using things like ceiling fans in very low speed mode in the winter will be enough to keep the air mixed without creating a thermocline or air separation.

Dandai said:

As Cukernaut mentioned, practically speaking, you’ll never realize financial gains by adding more insulation on top of existing insulation. Spending $500 to go from R30 to R60 might save you a few cents per month in energy usage.

Click to expand...

I had insulation prior but it sucked was very low and had bare spots. In general I would say get an inch or two above the wood in the attic. If you don’t have that it’s worth adding on top of what you have, which was the case for me. If your insulation isn’t atrocious as is though I would just leave it because dandai is correct here.

Lanx said:

BLACK+DECKER TLD100 Thermal Leak Detector

it's amazing, you just pull the trigger(and thats your reference temp) and move the gun around, the led lasers change from blue (colder from ref) to red(hotter from ref) in either 10f to 5f to even 1f increments.

I found every leak in my house w/ it. One of the biggest culprits? my fucking cable outlet from my 3season sunroom...

pretty sure you were on google pixel, you can get an ir camera attachment if you want that instead for more
PerfectPrime IR0102 Thermal Imager for Android Cell Phones, -4-572°F, 9 Hz
i have no exp w/ that

Click to expand...

Did fixing those simple outlets etc actually have a material impact on your house? I’ve heard it helps but haven’t done it yet am curious.

Lanx said:

it was all the outlets caulking, etc that was last year, this year i did attic air sealing too, no measurement really and the biggest savings seems to be getting a smart wifi thermostat tbh.

On the COLDEST days the sunroom was noticably more in line w/ the rest of the house temp tho

Click to expand...

You actually caulked the outlets or just put gaskets in them? I’m not used to seeing outlets actually caulked.

Lanx said:

i put gaskets on em and i foamed the holes where the romex enters in on the punch outs.

seemed to matter for the sunroom as it felt "drafty" in the walls even w/ insulation (it was an addition) on the regular house walls, nothing was really drafty.

Click to expand...

Nice. I’ll probably do that. Fire rated fill a gap? My issue is moisture from extreme humidity. I need to seal shit cause of that.

This weekend I’m trying to fix the grading around my house and gutters to get water away from the house during rains that should help with humidity.

[livejournal]

Sooo yesterday the shower drain stopped draining. I thought it was a clog so I poured draino down the drain - to no effect. Next I went out and bought a drum augur to snake the pipes. I used all 20 ft of it and only hit one or two turns. It came out immaculate. Clearly the pipes weren’t clogged.

At that point I figured the water level in the septic tank must be too high and backing up into the plumbing in the house. I had to dig around a bit but eventually uncovered a hidden manhole and took a peak inside. The water level was definitely high, but without context for what “normal” looks like, I wasn’t sure.

Our system has a pump, so I checked the breaker and it was ok. I confirmed the power cord was undamaged. Maybe the septic pump had simply died? I took a small vacuum cleaner outside and plugged it into the outlet. It wouldn’t turn on. Aha! I grabbed my extension cord and ran it out to the pump and it turned on as soon as I plugged it in.

I shut off the breaker and traced the wiring from the exterior junction box to the pump’s outlet and everything was intact and no worse for wear. After knocking some of the dust off the face of the outlet, I discovered the limits of my common sense. Of course it’s a GFCI outlet and it had just tripped. I reset it and turned on the breaker and it had power again

I’ve taken this occasion to familiarize myself with how to inspect and service the septic system. The design seems weird to me. The pump seems to be between the house and the tank. There are two plugs - one is a male that plugs into the second that has both a male and a female receiver. I’m assuming the latter is a switch or sensor that acts as electrical gate to the former (which seems to be the pump itself). When plugged in by itself, the male-only cord turns on the pump. But when plugged into the female end of the other cord, my voltage meter says the male-only cord isn’t receiving electricity.

Today’s tasks are making a scum and sludge stick to see if the tank needs pumped and searching for other manholes. I’ve only found the one manhole, but there must be a second one out there somewhere for the laterals.

[/livejournal]