Finishing the Basement Insulation

I’ve been kind of busy down in the basement for the past few days. I had to get the insulation project finished up. It was getting on my nerves.

It all started like this – remember when I told you all about how proud I was of myself for shoveling the long trench all the way to the pond? This was so the sump pump water had some place to go. I even had the tube attached outside. The long four inch one, so it wouldn’t freeze. It looked like this:

Well, as it turns out, I didn’t attach the tube well enough. I purposely kept it loose in case it froze up. I wanted the water to splash out instead of keeping the pump running all night long and eventually burning out. I basically jammed the tube up against the PVC pipe and kicked some snow around it to hold things in place.

When I woke up a few mornings ago, I looked out the window and to my absolute horror, found the corrugated tubing laying on the ground. It was in the middle of a big puddle of water that was shooting out of the PVC pipe. I guess the force of the water knocked the tubing away. You know what that means – it means that the water that was sitting against the foundation (all night long) was finding its way back into the basement. And for some reason, sump pump #2 wasn’t kicking on. The switch was getting caught up on something internally. I think it’s time for a new pump. I’ll use the current one as a backup.

Anyway, when I went down into the basement, I found about four inches of water covering the floor. There wasn’t anything worth much down there, but I was irked about the whole situation because I had put a lot of time and thought into making the sump pump system function properly. For a tube and a switch to throw the whole thing into disarray – well that was annoying.

And what was especially annoying was that I had some insulation on the floor that I was going to reuse for the basement walls. It got partially wet from the flood. Because of that, right then and there I told myself that I was going to finish the basement insulation project. I was too tired of looking at the mess down there and just wanted it done. If I could finish that up, I could move to the room directly above it and finish the bathroom as well. Putting out small fires is the name of the game I guess.

The first thing I did was to screw the tube onto the PVC pipe so it wouldn’t come off again. Done. The second thing I did was to begin peeling all the paper off the existing insulation to see what the situation was. Was there mouse damage? Was the insulation fitted properly? Was it long enough in each space? From my point of view, things looked manageable. Where things weren’t perfect, I made them perfect and where the insulation was too thin, I thickened it up with the fiberglass I purchased for the bathroom. I bought a bag too much, so I used it in the basement.

After I was finished insulating, I covered it up with plastic. I used up the 6 mil plastic I bought to cover the basement crawl space dirt floor and had to run out to the hardware store to grab a 10’x100′ roll of 4 mil. There really is no need for 6 mil plastic as a vapor barrier. I also finished the rim joist insulation with the extra rigid foam I bought for the bathroom too.

When I was all finished, I looked up and found this:

Please pardon the mess in that last picture.

As you can see from the first photo, I hung the shelves I bought in Florida. I’m missing two brackets, but can make them up with regular shelving. I have a plan for that. With these shelves, I can keep my tools off the floor and away from the water the next time the basement decides to flood. And I’m sure it will because when one relies on sump pumps to keep things dry, one needs to get used to water on the floor.

Ugg, I’m tired. And just in case you need to be reminded what the basement used to look like, click here.