15 August 2018
Amy has been hard at work on floors. After finishing the master bedroom floor, she started cleaning off the floor that will be in the master bathroom/closet. This is during the first pass with rubbing alcohol to clean off the old shellac.
And this is after three passes with rubbing alcohol, one coat of linseed oil, and one coat of wax. We are very pleased at how these floors are turning out!
I have been down working in the crawlspace again. After further research on creating a sealed crawlspace, I found an article about a company that specializes in sealed crawlspaces, but found that the humidity levels were staying around 70% in their crawlspaces. They discovered that moisture was migrating up through the concrete block walls and piers and evaporating in to the air in the crawlspace. Click HERE to read the article.
I decided that we needed to seal all of our concrete block structure as well. Rather than use some special rubberized foundation sealant, I decided to just grab a few cans of Drylok. I've never used it before because, quite frankly, if you've got wet or damp basement walls, you really need to fix the problem on the outside that is allowing water to get to the wall in the first place. Not try to stop it from the inside.
I grabbed a brush and got started.
The other project I've been working on is all the way at the top of the house. Insulating the attic. We've put a fair bit of thought in to this because there are several choices. Like the crawl space, I decided I wanted to make the attic a semi-conditioned space. This first decision meant that we would be insulating the underside of the actual roof rather than the floor of the attic. Then I decided that I did NOT want to insulate using spray foam.
The main reason I chose not to this was that I believe that is an irreversible change to the house and would permanently change its historic character. Insulating this way also created a non-vented roof deck. No ventilation means that if any of the wood roof decking or structure gets wet, it will probably stay wet and rot. In addition, it's fairly expensive and not DIY friendly.
I also decided that I didn't want to use batt insulation with air baffles because installing it and keeping it all in place was going to be problematic. Unlike the rafters in this photo, our roof rafters are only 4" tall. Getting a good air seal is also difficult to achieve with this kind of insulation.
The answer? A radiant barrier. I could only find one brand of radiant barrier called Silver Glo. If you can stand the sales pitchiness, here's a video about the product. An alternative would be to use two layers of 2" rigid foam board available from our "local" home supply center, but the cost per square foot would have been higher and would require more labor to install.
Installing a radiant barrier will achieve all of our goals. The roof deck will remain fully ventilated. Our attic will be insulated and air sealed. It can be removed later with little to no damage to the historic character of the house. It will make the HVAC system work better because it will be operating inside a semi-conditioned space. And we won't have to air seal every nook and cranny in the attic floor/second floor ceiling.
Nobody near us installs this product so it's going to be a DIY project. I suppose I prefer that anyway. I hooked up the 16 foot trailer to Otis and we were off to Gastonia! Along the way he got a little older.
We made it back home by mid afternoon and got it all unloaded.
Then came the installation, which is taking a number of days...
For some reason, the company in Gastonia did not sell me the big plastic washers they show in the video, so I used 1-1/4" fender washers instead.
With this project 90% done, the attic is very noticeably cooler (I'm guessing 30-40 degrees lower) than before, and our second floor is only 4-6 degrees warmer than the first floor instead of 10-15.
The wall around the office on the north end of the house that's inside the porch attic just has 1" thick sheathing boards on the diagonal with gaps between them. I want to air seal these gaps as best we can so we went ahead and bought a professional foam spray gun. This made the job much easier.
Yes, I'm using spray foam here. But it's only a little bit just to fill the gaps. There's just no other nice way to do this. And moisture can still travel through the wood sheathing if there's a need for it to do that.
Amy has been hard at work on floors. After finishing the master bedroom floor, she started cleaning off the floor that will be in the master bathroom/closet. This is during the first pass with rubbing alcohol to clean off the old shellac.
And this is after three passes with rubbing alcohol, one coat of linseed oil, and one coat of wax. We are very pleased at how these floors are turning out!
This shows the difference between the upstairs hall floor which we haven't touched yet, and the closet floor Amy just finished.
I have been down working in the crawlspace again. After further research on creating a sealed crawlspace, I found an article about a company that specializes in sealed crawlspaces, but found that the humidity levels were staying around 70% in their crawlspaces. They discovered that moisture was migrating up through the concrete block walls and piers and evaporating in to the air in the crawlspace. Click HERE to read the article.
I decided that we needed to seal all of our concrete block structure as well. Rather than use some special rubberized foundation sealant, I decided to just grab a few cans of Drylok. I've never used it before because, quite frankly, if you've got wet or damp basement walls, you really need to fix the problem on the outside that is allowing water to get to the wall in the first place. Not try to stop it from the inside.
I grabbed a brush and got started.
The other project I've been working on is all the way at the top of the house. Insulating the attic. We've put a fair bit of thought in to this because there are several choices. Like the crawl space, I decided I wanted to make the attic a semi-conditioned space. This first decision meant that we would be insulating the underside of the actual roof rather than the floor of the attic. Then I decided that I did NOT want to insulate using spray foam.
The main reason I chose not to this was that I believe that is an irreversible change to the house and would permanently change its historic character. Insulating this way also created a non-vented roof deck. No ventilation means that if any of the wood roof decking or structure gets wet, it will probably stay wet and rot. In addition, it's fairly expensive and not DIY friendly.
I also decided that I didn't want to use batt insulation with air baffles because installing it and keeping it all in place was going to be problematic. Unlike the rafters in this photo, our roof rafters are only 4" tall. Getting a good air seal is also difficult to achieve with this kind of insulation.
The answer? A radiant barrier. I could only find one brand of radiant barrier called Silver Glo. If you can stand the sales pitchiness, here's a video about the product. An alternative would be to use two layers of 2" rigid foam board available from our "local" home supply center, but the cost per square foot would have been higher and would require more labor to install.
Installing a radiant barrier will achieve all of our goals. The roof deck will remain fully ventilated. Our attic will be insulated and air sealed. It can be removed later with little to no damage to the historic character of the house. It will make the HVAC system work better because it will be operating inside a semi-conditioned space. And we won't have to air seal every nook and cranny in the attic floor/second floor ceiling.
Nobody near us installs this product so it's going to be a DIY project. I suppose I prefer that anyway. I hooked up the 16 foot trailer to Otis and we were off to Gastonia! Along the way he got a little older.
We made it back home by mid afternoon and got it all unloaded.
Then came the installation, which is taking a number of days...
For some reason, the company in Gastonia did not sell me the big plastic washers they show in the video, so I used 1-1/4" fender washers instead.
With this project 90% done, the attic is very noticeably cooler (I'm guessing 30-40 degrees lower) than before, and our second floor is only 4-6 degrees warmer than the first floor instead of 10-15.
The wall around the office on the north end of the house that's inside the porch attic just has 1" thick sheathing boards on the diagonal with gaps between them. I want to air seal these gaps as best we can so we went ahead and bought a professional foam spray gun. This made the job much easier.
Yes, I'm using spray foam here. But it's only a little bit just to fill the gaps. There's just no other nice way to do this. And moisture can still travel through the wood sheathing if there's a need for it to do that.
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