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Insulation is any material used to slow the transmission of heat or reduce the transmission of sound. Typical materials include fiberglass, foam, blown cellulose, and reflective foil. This should not be confused with weather stripping.

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Last week during a cold snap with high winds. I discovered moisture along the floor on one side of my bonus room, above the attached garage. Their was enough moisture that the baseboard molding ...
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I was planning to use foil faced 2" polyiso plus an air gap, plus 5 1/2 rock wool, to get 13+3+23, or r39. But this is all between the rafters below the roof deck, and the polyiso is impermeable. If ...
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I own a small condominium where the gas boiler and hot water heater are located in a small closet outside of the deck. While the closet is insulated, we see wild outdoor temperature swings (below -...
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I’ve started to reno our kitchen to our 1865 home in Ontario. We pulled the paneling off the wall and found pink insulation but when I pulled it away from the studding I noticed that there was a large ...
Dpell's user avatar
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I have a 100+ y/o home in upstate NY. Utilities are in the garage (oil boiler, well pump). There is a heating loop specific to the garage which comes on sub 45F. I haven't had any issue with utilities ...
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I'm nearing completion on a new build, and my contractor has been making some field changes that are not 100% reflected in the architectural plans. Some of this has been necessary, but I'm starting to ...
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I recently had an energy audit/blower door test on my 1963 single-story ranch home in SE Michigan. They noted a lot of air infiltration along the baseboards, and recommended pro sprayfoaming the rim ...
sonoflee's user avatar
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My room has been insulated with Polyurethane Insulation board and I’ve no idea if you can put wallpaper directly on top or not? If not then what can I do? I don’t like the silver spaceship vibe I’ve ...
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Sounds like a dumb question, I know IC stands for Insulation Contact, but I'm not sure if both the LED panel and driver can be covered in direct contact with insulation. I touched a driver today and ...
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Summary: Can I internally insulate a CWI-filled cavity wall? If I can, and I've done that, can I externally insulate it as well? I have a 1920s-1930s brick built house, with render on the 1st floor (...
Ralph Bolton's user avatar
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Original 1943 construction with an unfinished full-height basement that I'm beginning the process of converting to habitable space. There are various signs of historical water damage on some of the ...
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I have dual fireplaces back-to-back on either side of a wall. They are separate fireplaces; there is clearly a solid barrier at the back of each fireplace. They and the whole chimney are brick. We ...
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I'm just beginning a basement finishing project, so I expect this is my first of many posts. Right now I'm wondering about whether it would be worthwhile to add insulation to my rim joists. I live in ...
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I am converting my garage into a wood shop and have insulated my walls with faced R13 insulation.The ceilings have faced R13 installed with R30 unfaced additional to the R13. Do I need to install ...
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I have a really cold corner of my house in a duplex. Here are some shots from an infrared camera. I hope we can get this fixed without tearing down the siding or ripping out freshly installed kitchen ...
maredzki's user avatar
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I'm in the process of renovating a bedroom on the second floor and I have a few boards of silverboard (a Polyisocyanurate Foam Board Insulation) lying around and would like to use. The exterior wall ...
nonameswereavailable's user avatar
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In our unfinished basement we had floor to ceiling blanket/roll insulation from the builder. Now that we are finishing it, in order to meet R20, we are removing the bulky blanket insulation and going ...
nspace's user avatar
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I was surprised to learn that that there are risks with insulating the interior walls in older all-brick houses - particularly in cold climates. This article outlines some of the issues: http://www....
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My house was built in 1928, its an old Milwaukee bungalow. I have a small cantilever overhang in the front of my house. That area gets pretty cold in the winter, so I wanted to investigate insulating ...
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The house was built in 1930 and besides some bays stuffed with fiberglass the basement is uninsulated and unfinished. After two MN winters in the house I've managed to fill the larger holes but have ...
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Background: I recently bought a house built in 1996. It has a 1480sq ft (approx) living area, which is the same as the crawl space size. The location is in the Kansas City metro area. The yard is ...
mark84kcmo's user avatar
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The Scenario An apartment building with a flat black rubber roof. The A/C condenser is on a platform on the roof with an air handler inside the unit. The line set runs across the roof for about 20 ...
EBarr's user avatar
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My sister has a 100 year old or older home over a wet and damp crawl space on an island which has high tide and rain water flooding of streets an crawl spaces. A sump pump runs all the time. The home ...
user11933's user avatar
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I have a basement wall that was framed but never finished by the previous owner. I would like to complete it but want to be sure I’m doing things correctly. From what I can piece together I should be ...
NeedHelp's user avatar
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After taking all sheet-rock down I noticed that all walls (cement block) siting under ground are moist. Some of them even ate through footers. After farther look at the house I found out that their is ...
Lukas718's user avatar
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I live in a 1930s house in the UK, with a suspended wooden floor over a ventilated crawlspace. The floor consists of wooden floorboards, covered with either laminate flooring or carpet - there is ...
JRI's user avatar
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On the door frame and door, there are metal flaps that interlock when the door closes. It doesn't look like the door was built with a kerf weatherstrip channel. The house was built in the 60s.
John Ham's user avatar
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I have to reinsulate my basement after getting some foundation repair done, and there are now these steel reinforcement straps on the foundation wall. It's usually a livable space but it was stripped ...
GodinLG's user avatar
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I'm in the early stages of finishing off a basement where the back wall is just a bit more than half above grade. That side is concrete poured wall to just above grade and then 2x6 finished wall (...
Sycamore Farm's user avatar
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While researching insulation options, I came across a method where spray foam could be blown into small holes made in drywall between the studs, or it could be done from the exterior side. Existing ...
Nicole's user avatar
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Originally had wood paneling, it was installed on top of 1 inch foam board (r5), behind the foam board is a plastic barrier and then 2x4 frame, and then behind that, top half of block wall which is ...
Jake's user avatar
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I've recently stripped my basement walls of drywall and old pink batt that was rotting and molded do to being pressed against the concrete. We replaced all the rotten boards and removed the the pink ...
Damion Ripley's user avatar
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We are building a barn which will have the roof extend 10' beyond the walls on all sides. The walls will have 4" of rigid foam insulation. The trusses stop flush with the top plates, and have no ...
AJP's user avatar
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I am in the process of remodeling a shower in my master bathroom. The wall the plumbing is in is a north facing exterior wall. The wall to the right is exterior as well. Due to termites, the exterior ...
Rick Fox's user avatar
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We recently bought a house and are trying to do renovations ourselves. This project is the aftermath of some other projects. I am trying to figure out if we should fill/replace this wood between our ...
Sophia R's user avatar
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I have read articles that a sealed crawlspace is usually drier than an insulated vented crawlspace. I have a vented crawlspace that is vented but is dry. Problem is some of the insulation is falling. ...
Don Ovan's user avatar
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3 answers
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Recently we had water damage in our downstairs ceiling. Thought it was from a leak in the upstairs bathroom (since it is roughly below there), but when remediation team came out and cut out the ...
Derek's user avatar
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1 answer
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I bought a home with an unfinished basement with the intent to finish it. I live in the Pacific Northwest of the US where we get lots of rain, and there was some water intrusion. We re-graded the land ...
Christopher Williams's user avatar
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I just moved into a house with a finished attic. The second floor of the house (below the attic) is regularly 10 degrees warmer than the first floor with the AC running nearly constantly. I decided to ...
Bryan Coxwell's user avatar
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I have a 25x25 foot detached garage in Houston, TX. It's very hot/humid here. I'm considering insulating and putting in a mini-split. Its a pyramid hip and has no venting. It has tar paper between the ...
weejax's user avatar
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I'm doing a cut and cobble insulation job in the roof of a 12'x16' Tuff Shed. The rafters are 2x4 and the spacing of each bay varies because of installation plus warping/twisting. I'm using 2.5" ...
ryanc's user avatar
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I've got a 20x30 metal shed that I'm trying to finish out as an ADU. I don't know enough about insulation and A/C to choose what to install. The construction will be as follows from exterior to ...
Skyler Kovacs's user avatar
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A little background- I own a quadplex but, due to the insane COL in Florida, I'm currently housing 4/5 of my siblings and I need another unit for myself to live in. So I added this 20x30 steel shed to ...
Skyler Kovacs's user avatar
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I need to board my loft, and maintain the recommended 270mm of insulation depth. The existing joists are 4x2" (giving 100mm depth) so I'm looking at adding the additional 170mm with either ...
Tim's user avatar
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I have a wall on the first floor of my house that is very close to another building, but they are not connected. This wall has an exterior black vapor barrier in the outside and the sheathing is ...
Jason M's user avatar
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I have been fighting this bathroom fan for years. I rent but do a decent amount of upkeep and improvements as needed. I replaced the fan about a year ago. It’s a cheap nutone 80cfm fan. The bathroom ...
Austin's user avatar
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Location: Chicago-land area Situation: Finished basement about 1500 sq ft Basement has a bathroom, washer/dryer, HVAC system, and water heater, and has heating registers down there to stabilize temp ...
David Capretto's user avatar
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My townhouse has a small attic area over a bedroom (and another inaccessible space over another room). The attic space is on the south side of the building and there is a lot of heat gain in the ...
Hairy Beast's user avatar
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I'm looking to insulate a first floor bedroom in my house (in Ireland). I currently have pine flooring (which makes an awful noise when we step on it) and looking underneath these I see that there's ...
Ruaghain's user avatar
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I own a beautiful old Victorian home from 1905. A few months ago, we got a home energy audit. Unsurprisingly, the audit revealed that our walls leak like a sieve. The auditor said we had literally the ...
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