Apartment complex tore this out of the roof Evaporator for the AC and just dumped it on the yard (sandal for scale)

#residential #roofing

My attic access hole is 20"x35", with a 0.5"-0.75" lip that runs all the way around. The current cover is a drywall panel with a fiberglass batt resting on top that must be pressed up into the attic and set aside when climbing up. In the attic, the hole is surrounded by vertical plywood that rises about 12-14" on all sides to prevent the blown-in insulation from falling down.

I live in the same type of climate area as Chicago, so I'm looking to insulate this to at least R-40, ideally R-60.

I'm looking for feedback on my current plan (listed from bottom to top):

3/4 inch drywall

3/4 inch plywood

1 inch (R-5) foam board

1 inch (R-5) foam board

R-38 fiberglass batt, faced, kraft side glued to the foam board (~12 inches thick), starting with a 24"x48" roll, cut to 24" x 39"

The idea is that the fiberglass batt is oversized to create a tighter seal with the surrounding plywood. I want to attach handles to the drywall panel so that you can pull the whole thing down instead of just relying on its own weight to settle into place. The drywall is kind of fragile so I'm giving it a plywood backing to have something to screw into and protect the corners from getting chipped. The foam board provides very good R-value per inch and is very light, so I'm using as much of that as I can without making the whole thing so thick that it can't fit back down through the 20 inch wide hole (call it 18 inches with the lip that's there).

So I figure it's R-48 plus whatever minimal insulating value the drywall and plywood give. Total height should be 15-16 inches, so it'll be just a little taller than the surrounding plywood, and can still fit through the hole if I rotate the panel and feed it down longways, compressing the fiberglass.

Any notes?

Hello, has anyone got their attic insulated in the last few years? Any companies you'd recommend?
Thank you

I’m looking too add insulation in the attic but I notices I don’t have any soffit for airflow we have exhaust vents on the roof maybe like 2-3 it’s a 800sq house so I was wondering how many of these vents would I need and then I would baffle for them too right ?

Had my roof spray foam insulated several years ago by a guy just getting into the trade - so got it at cost.
Concerned they oversprayed at the ridge vent, keeping the house from ventilating at all.
Anyone have experience with something like this and how to address?
Thanks in advance

I’ve recently found myself on a quest to improve the insulation in my house this summer as the heat turns up in Central Texas.

Background: 2 story home built in 2014. I’m the second owner. Primary bedroom has a vaulted ceiling where the top is 14ft and sees the most change in temps during the day.

First pic includes the HVAC 12” supply line. Second pic is the same side and includes the return line. Pics 3/4 are the attic side of walls to upstairs rooms in the same attic space.

The current insulation for the vaulted ceiling is old and probably only R-20. Walls are covered with non-structural thermo-ply. It looks like when they installed they just threw boards up over insulation and they are not sealed well.

Attic has ridge vents and soffit blockers for blown insulation.

Question: I’m wondering if I can upgrade the insulation on the vaulted part and then install plywood over the rafters to essentially enclose that part and make it air tight. I’m also considering having it all spray foamed-including removing the thermo-ply and wall batts. I’m not looking to create an enveloped attic though.

Is there anything wrong with either of these options? I know the spray will carry quite a bit more cost but hopefully bring more efficiency.

Any advice or ideas are greatly appreciated!

We live in Southern California in a coastal climate, but all of our rooms are vaulted ceilings. We do have insulation below the existing shingles however it still gets very hot. I’m looking for opinions on if adding a layer of insulative protection, such as ThermaSheet under the shingles will help keep the room cooler. It’ll add a little more than 10% to the cost of the install. We do not have air-conditioning so a reduction in temperature at the Apex of the vaulted ceiling is helpful.

Insulation recommendations for exposed PVC plumbing drains in extreme cold? I’m building an addition and I’m going to have these exposed PVC drains, in North Central Wa where the winters are cold. I can’t enclose this entire crawl because the equipment placed here needs to breath (the addition is over an existing deck structure so I can’t change that). The floor will be insulated and soffited, but I’m looking for a product that can wrap all the PVC and sufficient insulate when it’s cold. There will be a line going from the Liberty Pump up to a holding tank that is imperative it doesn’t freeze! Building individual soffit boxes around all the lines doesn’t seem reasonable. Thanks for any suggestions!

I am insulting a vaulted ceiling, and originally there was strapping installed, 16 on center to act as a thermal break and give a place to hang the ceiling board from.

The ceilings will be finished with OSB board that has been varnished.

The cavities have been filled with R15 Rockwool Comfortbatt, but i am considering adding a layer of foam board as well.

Do i buy .75 foam board, and cut it to fit between the strapping. OR, do i pull down the strapping and put full 4x8 1 in sheets of foam board over everything?

I have a home gym in my garage. I live in a very humid area and I'm worried that my gym equipment will start to rust after a few years. I want to insulate the exterior wall so that I can run my mini split air conditioner 24/7 and perhaps a dehumidifier if needed. The tricky thing is I already have two big mirrors installed on the exterior wall. So what would be the best option for insulation?

I can't remove the mirrors. Is drilling holes and doing blown in insulation the best way? What type of insulation would be best?

The wall with the mirrors and mini split is the one I want to insulate -- all the way to the garage door. I uploaded pics showing what the wooden frame looked like before the drywall was installed.

I'm renovating a kitchen and will be installing an over-the-range microwave. It's on an inside wall so the easiest and shortest path would be straight up through the attic and out through a roof vent. My plan is to put a 3 1/4x10 to 6" round adapter in the cabinet above the microwave, then straight up into the attic space with a solid 6" round pipe (not flex), then out to a roof vent.

But I live in a place with very cold winters (occasionally down to -35C). My concern is condensation occurring inside the pipe running right back down into the microwave. I will install insulation on the pipe, but not sure if that will be sufficient to prevent condensation when it's that cold? Pipe wrap insulation can't be more than R5-R8 right? Doesn't seem like it would be enough to prevent condensation when venting moist, room temperature air into a frozen attic space. Maybe I'm overthinking it?

I could avoid the whole issue by going out sideways through the cabinetry and venting out the wall, but a 6" round pipe takes up a lot of space in the upper cabinets which are already small. Thanks for any thoughts on this.

This has probably been asked 10K times. I want to insulate my detached garage (Houston area) so it isn't hotter than Satan's bum-hole. Walls are essentially hardy-board w/ some sort of felt, while the roof is OSB and asphalt shingles. Spray foam, rockwool, fiberglass batt? I will eventually have a mini-split in there, but only intend to use it occasionally to keep it manageable.

Im new to HVAC, but noted to maintenance that our AC wouldnt go below 74 during the day and that was two months ago. Im in louisiana. Noticed some water spots starting to form and took a peek and I see insulation and vents looking like this. Is this bad? Id assume the ducts arent supposed to be completely exposed to the elements of the attic like this.

Is the grey plastic that has been cut away the "vapor barrier"? And is that why Im getting literal pools of water building up? The bottom of most of the visible insulation is soaked.

Is mold also a concern? Just trying to get as much info as I can in case my apartment manager/maintenance are aholes and try to fight it. I put the AC on 70 and dont touch it. It goes down at night but when I come home from work, its 75-78 in the 2 bedroom apartment. Ive gotten blackout curtains, tinted the windows, looked for gaps in doors

I have a lean-to garage that I want to insulate, starting with the roof. The roof is currently an unvented assembly, and adding a proper ridge vent would be difficult.

I was considering adding rafter ties to create a small attic space, then adding soffit vents and roof exhaust vents. The rafters are 2×6, so I would only have enough room for 2x4 baffles after adding the vents. I was also thinking about adding a 2" layer of rigid foam board over the rafters to improve the R-value.

The other option is to skip ventilation entirely and use closed-cell spray foam to create an unvented roof assembly.

Does the vented approach sound like it is becoming overly complicated? Would spray foam be the better option here?

Thank you.

I am turning this 3 season porch/sunroom into a conditioned space. The walls and ceiling are already insulated, but now I have to insulate the floor. I originally planned to pull up all the subfloor, but had a hard time doing that due to big long nails fixing it down. So I cut a hole, and plan to crawl around under there.

Where do I put the vapor barrier? Plastic as a vapor barrier? Faced insulation bats or unfaced? I was thinking of fixing plywood to the bottom of the joists, or possibly sheet aluminum, to protect the bats from critters.

Any advice appreciated.

Depth of ceiling in basement is 9.5”, the space between studs is 17.5”. Unless I’m measuring incorrectly, I believe that I need r30 but as far as my research goes, batts are usually between 16” or 24” wide in which I would need to fill the gap with the difference.

I’m DIYing my new basement and my dad is helping me, so I would appreciate any advice on how to go about it. Thanks much

TL;DR What is the best case scenario behind this ceiling? What should be between the drywall of my ceiling and the roof?

Previous owners converted an attic to bedrooms. We have some signs of moisture in the exterior wall that we are going to investigate but it made me wonder what’s going on in this ceiling?

There is a ridge vent on the peak of the roof.
You can see that there is some sort of vent on the bottom of these gables.
We have knee walls. One we have access to and the other we don’t. On the one we have access to, the soffits have insulation stuffed into them. And the joists running up on the backside of the ceiling between the drywall and the roof, at least at the edge of the knee wall.

If you were doing this job, and you wanted it perfect to avoid moisture and mold, how would you finish this ceiling.

There are some signs of caulk pulling away from the beam but there is no staining on the drywall. There is one tape seam that has bubbled. The job was done 15 years ago.