It is Memorial Day weekend 2022 and since I last posted, the electricians have been through to get the wiring done and last Friday the town building inspector came out. He has some minor items for our contractor to address. All this to say: progress continues.
After the inspection, we were given the go ahead to move forward with insulating - something the Mr. and myself (mostly the Mr.) will be doing without the assistance of professionals. Before getting to this stage, it is important to note a couple things:
(1) Our addition is built with energy heel trusses which give us some added space for insulation, definitely recommend going with energy heel trusses if you get the chance. They aren't much more expensive than traditional trusses and have the potential to save you lots of money in energy costs.
(2) If you do go with energy heel trusses, please make sure you have properly vented them before installing your insulation. We used some 2 inch foam board affixed to lath boards - not only does this allow the roof to vent, but the foam board prevents air movement, which is something that fiberglass insulation will not do - this approach to ventilation is a win-win.
Now for the pics. The blue stuff is the foam board. The batt insulation is Kraft faced R-38. We live in Wisconsin and our weather is unpredictable, so anything to help the house be more energy efficient is money well spent.
You can just barely see in the picture below, but we have 6 directional recessed/ can lights and the white thing in the center there is where the ceiling fan will be.
In the below picture, you can see the "head wall" where the old flat ceiling meets the new raised ceiling. Behind the insulation that you see is some Tyvek wrap. Again, that wrap helps with air movement.
One last shot.
Now that the ceiling is insulated, we will still need to insulate the walls. Prior to insulating the walls, the Mr. spent a few hours going through with some spray foam to help with all the small cracks that might have otherwise been difficult to address.
Update: It is now the first full weekend in June. Insulating the walls is now complete. I apologize for the giant heap of R-38 batt insulation in the center of the picture, but it is still a construction site. #ThisIsMyLifeNow #NewNormal
For completeness, I'll also share some pictures of the lower level now that the insulation is in place down there as well. We talked about adding insulation in the lower level ceiling to help muffle noises between the floors but we ultimately decided against it.
The reason we have foam board at the bottom of the wall pictured below is because that part of the house is poured concrete -- so we don't have enough depth between the concrete and the wall framing to fit batt insulation. Instead, we put 1 inch foam board in so we get at least a little more energy efficiency along that wall.
Welp. That is it for insulation. Sometime next week the building inspector will be out to check out the insulation as well as the items he asked to have addressed...and then we will move on to the dry wall stage of the project!
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