Take a look down in the alternative energy topics group under "superinsulating a new house".

 

I heat my house with a woodstove (furnace back-up set at 57 for when we're away, or iwhen it's so cold, that we'd have to feed the stove all night to keep the house warm).

My house has no insulation. (cinderblock walls) ugh. But the woodstove definitely helps.

I highly recommend an Ecofan for the stove. You set it on top, and it has an thermo-electric couple between the base and the fan part. When the stove gets up to 200 or so, the fan starts silently turning, moving the hot air above the stove into the room and circulating. A friend who stay with me last year said it makes a HUGE difference - as she grew up in a house heated with wood, and knows.

Bonus - no power needed to run it. So even if the electric's out, it still works. i love it.

 

You could apply rigid 2" insulation board to the exterior in addition to the fiberglass between the studs. Also, the sheathing, siding and interior drywall all have a little R-value as well.

It would probably be important to have a good vapor barrier, otherwise the rigid might trap moisture.

 

All that insulation is great. Where we live here in West Va it gets pretty cold and our old log house built in 1930 wasn't insulated very well. When rebuilding we added insulation where we could and the windows aren't new either. We heat with wood and coal depending on the temp outsied. If it is above 30 we use wood, because coal puts off so much more heat. Even with little insulation we stay nice and warm. We also have a 20,000 btu propane wall heater we use for back up and for when temps are not cold enough to burn the wood heater. Of course the better the insulation the easier to heat and cool. We put a small fan on the ceiling in the corner behind the stove and one on the ceiling to blow into the kitchen. The upstairs stays nice and warm, however we luckily found out before we put the cielings back downstairs that it would get really hot upstairs, so we had to insulate the downstairs cielings. It also makes it quiter if someone is upstairs. Good luck with your house. Tamsam

 

2 pound spray urethane foam has R7 per inch, R5 for the 1 pound product.

It's more expensive then bats, but you don't need vapor barrier and you get an absolutely perfect seal. It's not a DIY product.

Pete

 

2 pound spray urethane foam has R7 per inch, R5 for the 1 pound product.

It's more expensive then bats, but you don't need vapor barrier and you get an absolutely perfect seal. It's not a DIY product.

Pete

Then try this stuff

http://www.fomofoam.com/existing_homes.htm

 

For that price, you could get someone in to do the job for you. What's the point of a DIY product if you don't even save the install cost????

I'm sold on urethane, just not as a DIY project.

Pete

 

Not sure you can get the R-30 in a 5 1/2" wall. If you add it all up, you can get R-19, plus about 0.5 R for sheetrock, 1.0 for 3/4" pressboard, and even another R-3 if you put on 1/2" foam board on the outside between sidings. That'll give you R-23.5 which is very good for walls.

If I may interject an opinion, I would highly recommend blown cellulose or rockwool over batts. It fills in spaces and cuts down on air infiltration. This along with a housewrap keeps our heating and cooling bills down alot. Our winters aren't very harsh by any stretch but summers are brutal.

 

I have used fomofoam.

And I have used Dow's Froth-pak.

And 'touch-n-seal"

Spray in place foam is the greatest insulation!!!

And it is absolutely a DIY project.

I recently finished shooting our home, 2400 square foot house, I covered the interior walls and roof. The walls have one inch, and the roof has two inches.

By all means it is a DIY project, and FUN too!

 

I had my house foam insulated. It's good, but it's not all it's claimed to be.

It shrinks. I think it's 1%. That's not a big deal across the 16" between studs, but on a 30' tall wall, you lose a couple of inches top to bottom.

It doesn't go everywhere and fill everything. It goes where it flows the easiest. So it doesn't do a good job of crawling up that skinny space beside the window sill.

It does go everywhere it's not supposed to. Like in the sash weight boxes, jamming all the window weights.

It's only applied as wel as the applicator applies it. That's not a dig at the applicator, it's just a fact of life. When you jam a hose 20 feet into a wall space that you can't see and you start squirting some amount of foam while pulling the hose out, you get what you get.

You will have freckled walls from the plugs. They drill holes to squirt the foam in. You or they fill those holes with plugs that invariably pop out.

Mice love the foam, once they adapt to it. Oh, the first year is great. But once they learn to gnaw tunnels in it, shesh!

Makes future repairs interesting. Trying to run an electric wire up through a foam insulated wall is an exercise in frustration.

I still think it's better than blown in celulose. It's still the best way to go when insulating a completed structure, like an old house.

 

...It shrinks. I think it's 1%. That's not a big deal across the 16" between studs, but on a 30' tall wall, you lose a couple of inches top to bottom.

It doesn't go everywhere and fill everything. It goes where it flows the easiest. So it doesn't do a good job of crawling up that skinny space beside the window sill.

It does go everywhere it's not supposed to. Like in the sash weight boxes, jamming all the window weights.

It's only applied as wel as the applicator applies it. That's not a dig at the applicator, it's just a fact of life. When you jam a hose 20 feet into a wall space that you can't see and you start squirting some amount of foam while pulling the hose out, you get what you get.

That sounds a lot like well shredded paper they were spraying.

You describe to a 'T' what sounds like shredded newspaper.

It does shrink, it does sag, and it does not totally fill all crevices when they pump it in like that.

Does your styrofoam ice chest shrink? My ice chests do not shrink.

I have sprayed a lot of foam, when it is left outside in the sunlight it will dissolve and finally shrink. But I have never seen an application like what you describe.

Foam is often two-components. Those two components need to be mixed at the spray nozzle. Once mixed they can NOT travel down a hose. The foam expands and it is terribly sticky. It would jam inside of a hose and become a solid within seconds.