Old farm house insulation questions-help!

Whooots ! Oh yes, check to see what wiring is . Will be harder (more expensive) to rewire AFTER filling wall cavities w/insulation .

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R. F. in Western Mtns. of Maine
Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then !

Our house is 71 years old and I cannot imagine tearing it down and/or living in a new house. Lots of those houses are still standing precisely because they can breath...doesnt help your comfort level but it does help prevent rot. And besides...a paid for drafty house is far preferrable to a plastic fantastic new house you owe on IMO.

I helped on the remodel of an older house that had at some point been insulated with the blown in cellulose into the walls and the cellulose had mostly settled towards the bottom of the walls and collected moisture which in turn rotted the rim sills. The contractor I was working for said he saw a lot of that and that even with newer homes they build them so tight they get rot issues if the buildings arent ventilated properly.

We replaced our windows and exterior doors, caulked the exterior of the house as needed, and went over our heating ducts and sealed the joints with mastic and it made a huge difference for us. We heat with wood but have no trouble keeping 72º inside when its in the single digits outside.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

Start with blown insulation and attic ventialtion then start changing windows and doors. Insulate the basement down four feet. You may never get the walls 100% but you should be able to clad it with styrofoam from the outside and reside it with an air barrier. Usefull but really not as good as it should be.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup........

I lived in a house that was built in 1905. It had oak framing set on homemade foundation. The walls were plaster, insulation added later probably - the blow in type which had sunk to the lower 1/3 of the wall, but there was 9 inches of rock wool and fiberglass over the ceiling.
The other house I lived in was built by a lumber man about the same time as the one above. It was built with quality lumber, walls were filled with sawdust for insulation.

Both houses are still standing strong with folks living in them never being empty for more than a month or two.

Wiring , Yes definitely needs to be checked and probably changed. Most people use a lot more electrical things than when old houses were built and wired.

Check your local free cycle list or at thrift stores look scatter rugs. Some people also take out decent carpet with decor change.

Hay/straw around the foundation is a quick fix but if they are under the eves they will hold moisture if you get much rain. They will be a good start in your garden though!

Buy some spray foam in a can at the lumber yard, Anyplace you feal a draft squirt some in the hole or crack, Check your foundation for cracks or holes and sqiurt it full of the foam. Take off the plastic cover on the outlets and squirt some around those to. If your front door leaks air around the bottom just roll up a towel and lay it on the floor,same with windows. Put plastic on both sides of your windows and any ext doors that you dont use. Find a carpet store and buy chunks or pieces of carpet and put them in the rooms where you & your family spends most there time in like the bathroom livingroom etc. If you have a crawl space under your house you need to measure the distance between the floor jiosts and put insulation there,same in the attic. If your acess hole to the crawl space is outside, make shure that the hole is covered to keep air out.Invest in a wood stove if its affordable.We live in a 100+ yr old house and with a wood stove, It keeps the propane bill affordable & the boys have electric space heaters in their rooms for those cold nights like earlyer in the week when it got to 20 below

There's a lot to be said for just filling cracks with spray foam as RW suggests. Do yourself a favour and shell out for the gun type spray guns and screw on cans. They work so much more efficiently and you can just turn them off and store them for weeks and months without losing the remaining foam. Use low expansion foam unless you have alot of large areas to fill, then get the gap filler type.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup........

Lots of great advice here! If you are planning to keep the house and not build new, that would be the sign that you need to do a GOOD job in getting this problem solved. There are huge differences in how houses are built, and also what quality you are dealing with. Obviously no or minimal insualtion is present. There are many ways to insulate the house (consider the options presented here), but i would bring in a professional insualting company, maybe a couple, to have them come out, take a look see and recommend corrections(and give a proposal) that are the most cost effective for your house. You are under no obligation to have them do it, but they will steer you to the best way to fix it. You can do it yourself, or then have them come and do it. Interestingly in the insulatiing buisness, the contractors price installed is often not much more than buying the stuff your self at Lowes or Home Depot.

Insulation, in my book, would be your best bang for the buck, followed by new windows. Sealing leaks to me is part of the insualation correction.

best of luck,

Jim

Tear it down and start from scratch?

I had an old farm house. Still have it. No amount of money that I can or am willing to spend will ever make it "right". For a mere $7,000 we built a new smaller house that is right. We love the new place just up the hill from the old place. We're using the old farm house for storage, animals, etc. Gradually we're tearing it down, reusing the materials for animal shelters and building our on-farm slaughterhouse there. Wish I had done that 20 years ago instead of trying to fix it up. Waste of time and money all those years.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids