Insulation, Radiant and Vapor Barriers - Attick Insulation

We recently purchased 2 story, semi detached, brick veneer, unfiinished basement, 12yo house. Master bedroom is on the top floor and is 50% above the garage. The bedroom portion of the garage is insulated and covered with the drywall.

With temps dropping we noticed that entire top floor is 2C cooler than the main floor. At time of pre-sale inspection we were informed that ceiling insulation seemed a bit low.

Are we correct to suspect that we may be loosing too much heat on the top floor due to old and inadequate ceiling insulation? All windows on the top floor are new. The thought is to add R24 to the ceiling (fiberglass). Between already existing insulation and new R24 there should be at least R40? Are we correct in this assumtion or we do we have to remove old insulation and add new R40? Can ceiling joists be covered by fibergalss insulation, Roxul for example, or should the joists remain exposed. Thank you.

Before you bought the house, you should have had a whole house inspection.

I wish that more people would watch Holmes On Homes.

It is too bad that the television stations took it off the air because he was cutting down on the business of shoddy carpenters and shoemakers that call themselves contractors.

Mikes motto is - Do It Right!

Whenever there is something in doubt, you do a exploratory.

In your case, you are going from a unheated garage to a master bedroom.

Unfortunately, you are not well versed in new home construction or building codes - or you would have probably walked away from this deal.

Because engines runs in the garage, you have to have everything sealed up really good in the garage to keep the carbon monoxide from coming into the house.

Then you get into heating and cooling issues and also plumbing and electrical issues.

Mike Holmes favorite saying is - take it all down and find out what the problem is and fix it right!

Unfortunately contractors are only in the business to make money. Their goal is to get in there, make the money as quickly as possible - do the least amount of work and get out of there as quickly as possible with the most amount of money that they can stick in their pockets.

Usually, when the homeowner notices that they have a major issue, it is too late, because either the home builder has gone out of business or has moved to another town.

In your case your home is far out of warranty.

Without knowing what type of HVAC you have, there is nothing that can be suggested as to how to improve your situation. Be it a hot water boiler and a zone valve and a thermostat that could raise the temperature in that room, along with your heating bill.

Adding insulation to the attic, which would make it more efficient - but would do nothing for the R factor in the walls.

If there is a ceiling in the garage, chances are the contractor didn't insulate it or insulate it properly and it would have to all come down and do a exploratory and find out what the issue is and do it right.

I could only make two suggestions,

1 - make good friends with a good contractor - because chances are it is only going to get colder as winter progresses and you are going to be in for sticker shock when he tells you how much it will cost to fix someone elses mistakes.

2 - buy the book - Make It Right by Mike Holmes

3 - live with the problem and save your money and sell the house to someone else and let them fix the problem that the previous homeowner probably already knew existed.

Hi Molson, my goodness, I don't see what you said to deserve that!

Yes we will try to help you and I'll avoid the lectures. Mr. Fix It is correct, we will need some more information. When a living space has an exposed floor along with walls and ceilings, it is a combination of everything that makes the space hard to heat, thus adding insulation to the attic will help, but probably not as much as you would like.

The first step would be to air seal everything you can. Air leaking out the upper areas pulls cold air in the lower spaces and as MFI stated it can pull in exhaust fumes and co from vehicles in the garage. Make sure you have a co detector and don't leave your vehicles running inside the garage.

Back to air sealing, before you add any insulation, locate all electrical, plumbing and chimney spaces and fill the gaps with fire rated foam. If any gaps are too big, use sheet metal or sheetrock, then some foam.

As for any floor space that is sheet rocked below and over a cold space, you should try to determine what is in there for insulation. Worse comes to worse, you can cut an access hole and look up in there. A poster some time ago was quite shocked at the minimum amount of insulation he had. Once you know we can advise. After all is done, the hole can be patched and sealed. Tape some plastic over it while you are waiting to do the insulation.

Bud

Thanks Mr. Fix it. Not the news I hoped to hear but better than none, got to start somewhere. We are not selling the house, yet...lol...my wife loves the house, may be until she sees the first heating bill in the winter, but until then I got to figure out how to correct the problem.

I went to look in the attick. There is fiberglass, blown in pink insulation. Could not see any joists. Measuring tape showed depth of the insulation about 6 - 7 inches. So for loose fill it amounts to about R12-R14 where atticks must be at least R40. I suspect the first and least expensive step to improving my situation would be improving insulation in the attick to at least R40. The question I have is do I have to remove the old blown in fiberglass or can I put new bats on top of the old stuff? Should I go across the joists with the new stuff or dump it on top of the old stuff and in between the joists?

Thanks again.

You should fill in any low spots and then going across the joists is fine. It will give you good coverage. And you can leave the old stuff in place, no need to remove it. Just do any air sealing you can prior to adding the new insulation as fiberglass does not block the flow of air.

Bud

Thank you very much Bud. What do you mean by air sealing?

Air leaking from a home is one of the biggest sources of heat loss and one that is often easy to prevent. The warm air rises and finds a way past electrical boxes, plumbing holes, and numerous other bupasses where it eventually makes it's way outside. Then a corresponding amount of cold air has to find it's way back in to replace it. Thus warm air out and cold air in. Plug either end of those leaks and you start to reduce the energy loss. Where your house sets on the foundation, all the hols you can access from the basement, and the attic as mentioned.

When doing an energy audit we install a big fan and de-pressurize the house the force cold air to enter through every little crack or seam in the house. We then inspect everywhere with an infrared camera to identify where sealing needs to be done. However you can find much of what we uncover just by searching the basement ceiling and attic floor. Your time and expenses will be well worth it.

Bud

Blow in some. It does a better job insulating plus you can add as much as you want. Batts are too restrictive as far as thickness choices and widths.

Cellulose will give you full coverage over everything and around any truss diagonals.

No matter what type of insulation you use, make sure it does not block the soffit vents. You can easily stick in cardboard or foam chutes to keep the vents free.

Dick

Thank you very much! I shall try.