Insulation, Radiant and Vapor Barriers - Cold floor - what can I do?

The floor in our kitchen was frigid in the winter. We've completely gutted it, and are now looking at insullating it properly.

We went to the website for the insullation and it talks about 2 insullating techniques.

a) Putting the insullation and vapor barrier under the kitchen floor (between the joists), and putting vapor barrier directly on the dirt.

b) another step was to insulate the exterior walls. There is the blue styrofoam on the outside, but to have pink run down the foundation walls on the inside, and have maybe 2 feet extra on the ground - laying on top of the plastic we will lay down.

My first question is: Is step b necessary? We're all about doing this right since we've spent a lot of time/effort in ripping this thing apart. Will it help keep the heat in? (we get some very cold winters)

We will then pipe heat into this area to help keep it warm.

:confused: And I guess my second question is: why do you put insullation under the kitchen floor, if you're heating the crawlspace?? Don't you want the heat to travel up into the kitchen? We will have a vent of course to actually heat the kitchen, but why trap the heat down there in the crawlspace with the insullation we've put in the floor joists?

And thirdly: Is there any benefit to laying insulation on the dirt? Or is the ground not a significant area of heat loss?

Your close with B but not the foam on the ground. Seal it up and let heat and AC out down there. GO LOOK AT
http://aboutsavingheat.com/crawlspace.html

6 mil poly on the ground over lap it 2 ft tape all seams @ ' insulation on the walls. Cut and fit a block of R19 in each joist space up on the sill plate all around the home.
No insulation in the joist. This way the crawl space works as a big heat sink

ED ;) My .02 cents

Thanks, that makes a lot more sense.

I didn't understand why you would insulate the whole floor, and then trap the heat in there. So instead you insulate the walls, the sill plate, put the poly on the ground and do it that way.

Did you go to that www. I had there and read it for sure. We have had to rework so many that had insulation up in the joist and open vents to the outside. I cant recall all of them.

ED ;)

Yep, I went to the site, and it really did help explain everything - why the heat is being lost in the first place, and then how to fix it.

Should be our weekend project so we'll see how it goes.

Thanks again for all of your help!