electrical wiring and
rough plumbing precede
house-insulation.
It's fun to watch as you
build your home.
house-insulation is done after your electrical and plumbing is installed. It comes in many types.
There is the blown in type they use in the ceilings. Polyurethane Foam Insulation is popular to us also. Our daughter and her husband used this type insulation and it comes widely recommended. The fiberglass insulation bats come in various thicknesses. Your city inspector and your architect/engineer will both specify what rating you should use for your area, if you are using bats. The city inspector wants to know that you have the proper thickness or R-value used in the walls and the ceilings.
Insulating the basement
In the basement, our house-insulation company used a drop down insulation, so each of the walls were covered to the floor, but nothing was put in the ceiling (floor of the main house), leaving it open to run wires easier from the basement. We've never seen that done before, and it seems to be fine. The only draw back would be in the sound barrier that bats might offer between the house above and the basement. The house-insulation bats were an easy install in the walls. The crew each had a long stick with hooks on a “T” on it. The "T" grabbed the bat and lifted it up to fill the space between the 2x4's. I don't even recall if they stapled it in place, it went in so fast. I ordered the insulation from a company that we got our lumber from, and they also installed it. When the installers start insulating the house is when your "sticks" start looking like there's going to be a house here. It doesn't take very long to get to this point, compared to what's ahead. To find an insulator contractor, ask around, or look in the yellow pages. If you google the words "insulation contractor" you may find someone that way. We found an exterior contractor who does walls, roof, insulation, windows, outside doors, roofing, shingles, siding, guttering, brick. Do your homework, and actually go see some of his work in progress, plus finished, so you know the kind of work he does. After getting into our buying club, we used their buying power to purchase from the lumber company. The lumber company bills them, and then the buying cluyb billed us. That worked great for us because some of the materials suppliers want you to have an account with them in order to purchase directly. This buying club already had the account and it relieved us of any stress in the matter.
"Kick-outs" and Insulation
If you have “kick-outs” in your home, where the house will extend out 18 inches, expanding the room slightly, then you need to be concerned about insulating that kick-out. Make sure all your upstairs (mainfloor) plumbing is “inside” the main house, not sticking out on any of the “kickouts”. If the plumbing is in a kickout, it will be on an outside wall, and not have as much insulation from the COLD weather. As the plumbing goes down the wall, and then back under the house to the main plumbing line, the plumbing is exposed to cold air which will ultimately give you grief if you live in the northerly areas with freezing temperatures, unless it is adequately protected.. The following is our experience w/Plumbing & Insulation We had never worried about anything but taps freezing until we built our first house, and the drain peatrap froze in the master shower bathroom. As we were building, I could see that in that 18 inch kickout we added to our bathroom, the plumbing was awfully close to the outside wall of the main house. Was there going to be enough insulation in the floor to keep water from freezing? I asked. They told me it would be fine. “OK” I said. And then our first winter I noticed standing water in the shower floor and it never even crossed my mind that the peatrap had frozen. It didn't help that the insulation was put on the inside of the peatrap so the trap was exposed entirely to the elements. Well, as you can imagine, that this was a wakeup call to a certain lady-GC. Don't listen to those who want you to think they know it all. Listen to those inner feelings that often warn you of impending problems, especially when it concerns your house-insulation.
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