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You are here: Home / Home Improvement / Continuing to Insulate With Rigid Foam

Continuing to Insulate With Rigid Foam

December 13, 2014

I have a somewhat entertaining story for you. Here goes…

Last week some time, mother nature decided to throw some -2 degree temperatures at us. I read the weather forecast ahead of time and after reading it, I stood up tall and puffed my chest out. I did this because I was me – and as you may remember from one of my earlier posts, I had installed a nice, new, shiny, gigantic wood burning stove. I have been waiting for the cold weather because, hmmm…let me see…as I put it, “I don’t know if we’re even going to need to use the pellet stove anymore. This wood stove is so great, we’ll be sweating in here all winter.” I love remembering all the fun things I say.

As it turned out and as the cold weather hit, Laura and I began freezing our asses off. I felt a little stupid in the beginning, but following my explanation of thermodynamics to my better half, I felt even stupider. After hitting rock bottom, I finally admitted that the problem wasn’t our heat sources, it was the fact that we were living in what can only be described as a colander. You know, a spaghetti strainer. Stand anywhere in the house you want, you can feel a draft hitting you right in the face. And in those special corners and dark nooks, you can even smell fresh air from outside. How? Who knows.

So many things went through my mind as I sat there wondering why my stupid wood stove wasn’t keeping the place warm. I first thought that I should really crank the sucker up and harness all the BTUs it has to offer (running out of wood the whole time). After that, I thought I should run over to the pellet plant and grab a few tons of pellets to run both stoves simultaneously. Finally I thought that I should just get going and fix the source of the problem. The reason why the stoves have to work overtime to keep the house a measly 60 degrees. I needed to get back into insulating, so that’s what I did.

I want to give you a quick analogy here because I’ve been thinking of it all week, and really, this is the only place I can speak freely. I get the feeling that a few specific people are getting tired of me talking about insulation. This blog doesn’t talk back or have any feelings, so it’s probably the best place to talk shop.

Say you live in an area that has cold winters – and one day, while it’s bitterly cold outside, you decide to stand on your front sidewalk totally naked. I’m sure you can imagine what would happen within just a few minutes of standing there. Yes, you’d get cold and begin to freeze. Now, we all know that when we get cold, our bodies shiver. The reason our bodies do this is to burn stored energy (food) to create heat (body temperature). If it was really cold outside or if your shivering wasn’t getting you warm enough, you’d most likely begin to jog in place. If things get bad enough, you can play touch football in the front yard, but that would be tough to find people to go up against, so you’d most likely just jog in place.

Funny thing would happen if you jogged in place long enough – you’d get hungry. Why? Because you probably burned off enough stored energy. Your body would feel that and want more food to stay in operation. So you ask someone to throw you a ham sandwich out the front door. They do and you chomp it down. You feel better, but strangely enough, as you continue to jog, you continue to get hungry. You ask for another ham sandwich and you get one, but the cycle continues. Sure, you can stay warm, but the price to pay for that is a whole heck of a lot of ham sandwiches. We like to call this, “feeding the beast.” It’s also known as needless energy consumption.

How much does a goose down coat cost? I’d guess that a nice one costs a few hundred bucks. Imagine that someone got sick of you jogging naked outside the front door and having to continuously toss ham sandwiches to you, that they chucked out a goose down parka instead. You slip that sucker on and fall asleep, nice and warm all night long. No more ham sandwiches necessary. We call that insulation. It’ll take a hundred ham sandwiches to pay off that goose down parka, but after it’s paid for and put on, you won’t have to jog anymore and you’ll be a heck of a lot more comfortable. Get what I’m saying here? I’m sick of jogging.

Since I was only partially finished with insulating the log cabin room, I decided to head out to Campbell’s building supply in Madison a few days ago to purchase ten sheets of one inch thick rigid foam. I bit the bullet and got all ten. I usually only do around four at a time, but I figured that it really makes no difference at this point. The room has got to get done. And now that I know how far ten sheets go, I know that I only need about five more to finish completely.

I have been working on attaching the foam board to the walls for a few days. I’m trying to do a nice, tight job, so the thermal barrier will be something I’ll never have to worry about again. As you can see from the picture below, I used tape to seal the seams for the first part of the install, but abandoned it after realizing that silicone caulk does a much better job. Unfortunately, I ran out of caulk, so I’ll need more before I continue. Here’s a picture of what I’ve done so far:


Insulating With Rigid Foam
Insulating With Rigid Foam

And here’s a picture of a seam that I sealed with silicone caulk. I’ll tell you – it’s a really strongly sealed seam. I love the caulk idea. It practically bonds the pieces of foam board together.

Sealing Rigid Foam Seam With Silicone Caulk
Sealing Rigid Foam Seam With Silicone Caulk

The temperature hasn’t dropped back down to the single digits yet, so I don’t know if this insulation made an improvement, but I will tell you that the log cabin room holds its temperature much better than it used to. Yesterday, it was about 32 degrees outside and all we had going was the pellet stove in the other room. The log cabin room stayed a cool 60 degrees and didn’t move all day. It actually may have risen towards the end, meaning that the room is holding temperature and keeping the heat in, as opposed to letting the walls and ceiling suck it all out.

It’s all about stopping the conductive heat loss with the rigid foam r-value and then stopping the convective heat loss with the air barrier of the foam and then the silicone sealant. If you can accomplish stopping both of those things, you’ll have a nice toasty warm house without burning all your firewood and pellets.


Up next, drywall and paint.

Related posts:

  1. Air Sealing Insulation Makes a Big Difference
  2. Insulating Basement Rim Joists
  3. The Windows are Installed
  4. Bathroom Insulation is Done
  5. Insulating Part of the Basement

Filed Under: Home Improvement

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Comments

  1. Ryan says

    December 15, 2014 at 7:23 pm

    Any better?

    Reply
    • Jay Gaulard says

      December 15, 2014 at 8:10 pm

      Hi Ryan,

      The insulation is working wonderfully so far. I’d have to say the biggest difference I’ve noticed is that after I make a fire, it takes only minutes to heat the room up as opposed to taking much longer, like it did before. I think the cold walls used to suck up the heat. Also, this is by far the warmest room in the house now. No drafts and the heat really holds for a long time. As a matter of fact, the temps were below 30 a few nights ago and after I woke up, the room was sitting at a sweet 58 degrees. It used to be around 45 degrees before insulating.

      If you remember, the walls in this room are solid wood, meaning they are a big thermal bridge. Six inches of solid wood offer a low r-value. Adding a mere one inch of foam at an r-value of only five has made a huge difference. I can’t wait to tackle the rest of the house the same way.

      I found a great video the other day that really shows how lousy some types of insulation are and how lousy some way of insulating are. And they demonstrate this by using one of those thermal temperature guns. You can check out the video below, but from now on for me, instead of going nuts over pellets and firewood, I’m going nuts over rigid foam.

      Take care,

      Jay

      Reply
  2. Ryan says

    December 15, 2014 at 8:38 pm

    I have a woodstove insert that I use as a primary heat source. I insulated the basement joists and the difference is unbelievable. I think my floor was sucking up a lot of heat. FYI, I live in Vestal NY. Home of Binghamton University, think you went to school here? Why you get rid of the JD X300?

    Reply
    • Jay Gaulard says

      December 15, 2014 at 8:57 pm

      Hi Ryan,

      Good to hear about the nice warm floor you’ve got. It’s hard to get used to – the fact that something stays warm like it’s supposed to. I’m so used to the cold.

      I did go to Binghamton University. Graduated in 1998 and then again for graduate school in 2000. I had a really good time there and enjoyed the area a lot. I especially liked the Number 5 Restaurant (http://number5restaurant.com/) and driving through Owego to get up to visit Ithaca. Laura and I went blueberry picking up in that area and visited Wolf Park. Good times. I was even there when the Vestal Steakhouse was alive. I’m not sure what’s in that spot now, but we had a really good dinner there one night.

      The John Deere x300 (among other tools) was a casualty of our move to Florida. I thought we’d be there a lot longer than we were. First, I freaked out and wanted to leave Connecticut because I felt I had to move on with my life and then I freaked out and wanted to leave Florida. All I can say is that I’m glad to be back in upstate. It’s not upstate New York, but it’s close. It’s upstate something and that’s where the people are better and life is good.

      Jay

      Reply
  3. Ryan says

    December 15, 2014 at 9:04 pm

    Funny!! Number 5 is still in business, Steak House, not so much. It was knocked down and a hotel is now there. My first home was behind the steak house, Nice quiet neighborhood.

    Owego is cool and so is Ithaca!

    Reply

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