Thursday, October 20, 2016

What I did on my summer vaca … wait, that’s not right

This post should really be titled Why I’m not making any progress on Jane Turner.

This past weekend was taken up by trying to make the family room and dining room be warmer this winter. Recommended insulation value for where I live is R49 to R60. Existing insulation in the area above the family room was R-19 at best, though there were a few areas where there was R-ZERO, probably because a contractor had removed it at some time in the past and didn’t put it back after completing his job.

The family room *may* have been an addition to the house – we have no idea - but one thing we do know is that the roof angle is very acute and putting another layer or two of rolled fiberglass out there would be extremely difficult. We had installed radiant barrier on the bottom of the rafters, so could blithely fill up as much space as was left with fluffy, blown-in fiberglass.

Here’s a look at the targeted area.



Another look from a different angle, after the “retaining wall” had been installed.



And we also have a truly odd space that’s above one end of the family room and part of the dining room. We did clean out the who-knows-how-old discards before adding the new insulation. The shingled area is one side of a gable (why are there shingles *under* the roof?). If you look carefully next to the vertical plywood wall, you can see another zero insulation space.


Somehow, husband managed to get all 10 bags/packages/bales of compacted pink stuff into the car in one trip!!!



Here’s the machine and its two 50-foot sections of 3-inch corrugated hose. The guy at Home Depot told us we needed to use the entirety of the 100 feet of hose because the bumpy corrugations help fluff up the insulation.



This is an up close and personal shot of the machine – my view as I hugged this thing repeatedly to load the bales of insulation in half-bag increments. This is an incredibly well-designed and extremely cool machine!

Hose disappearing into attic.



And after about three hours of work, TA-DAH!!! We still need to even out the piles a bit – the blower does not allow for a lot of fine control and tends to make piles.





>^..^<

1 comment:

  1. We have something similar to your "inside" shingles. When we added rooms on for mom, the addition's roof was built over the original roof, shingles intact. That car was packed!

    ReplyDelete