Insulating a Building

I am located in central North Carolina and getting ready to insulate my shop which is 30x70 w/10' walls. Wood frame with metal roof and walls (metal content = Morton building). I plan to blow R-49 worth of insulation into the ceiling. The building has ridge and soffit vents. A vapor barrier will be installed under the drywall.

My question deals with insulating the walls. I checked with a local insulation contractor and sprayed foam is WAY out of my price range. The wall thickness where there is no support structure is 7"; support structure cuts it to 5-7/16" in some places. R-19 insulation bats are 6-3/4" thick and designed for 2x6 studs. The last 2x6s I bought at Lowes were

1-5/16x5-7/16". Studs will be placed at a mixture of 16" and 24" spacing in the walls.

I think I have two choices for insulating the walls.

  1. Use R-19 fiberglass bats and leave some air space against the metal skin.
  2. Fill the walls with blown insulation. The construction lends itself to horizontal "shelves" inside the wall at about the four and eight foot levels. Would these be enough support to keep the blown insulation from sagging/compacting over time? The only thing I have found on the WEB about blowing insulation into walls is "dont's do this yourself".

Suggestions?

Reply to
keith bowers
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Blown insulation blows. You will be cursing yourself for years if you go that route. Every time you have to go into a wall or the ceiling it will be a dusty, dirty nightmare, whether you use fiberglass or cellulose (DAMHIKT).

I would use batts for the ceiling and walls. You can go to a thicker batt if you want and compress it against the framing, the old phobia about reducing the R value by compressing fiberglass has been disproven.

Reply to
ATP

Lowes has a relatively new insulation called "Miraflex" that I just tried in insulating my sunroom floor. It is about 9 inches thick, but comes on a roll compressed to about an inch. Unroll it, fluff it like a pillow, and install. Beautiful part is, NO ITCH. It's spun instead of chopped material. Best thing since women.

RJ Eastern NC

Reply to
Backlash

My garage addition is 2 x 6 stud contruction with R-19 batts in the walls. There is one shared (warm) wall and one open service door, but essentially no air circulation and no additional heat in the addition. No lights on or equipment running in the addition at the moment.

It's about -12F outside right now, windchill is -31F. The temp in the addition is within 2 degrees of the 68F in the main garage.

Reply to
Don Foreman

Reply to
Jerry Wass

There's no problem (besides the additional cost) with using thicker batts.

Personally I'd go with R-25 unfaced batts in the walls.

If you use R-19 and leave an air space between the fiberglass and the steel, be sure it is fitted well with no gaps on the drywall side - it doesn't take much air flow (by convection) on the drywall side to negate the insulation.

The "miraflex" mentioned in another post sounds interesting and I agree with the comment about not using blown in the walls. But it's hard to beat the cost and performance of blown in a flat attic. So make sure you do whatever you need to in the attic up front...

Bob

Reply to
Toolbert

IIRC (I opted not to go with Morton, eventually) they have large fibreglass batts sized for the 7'-6" or whatever it is that they space their framing on. Don't know how the price compares.

Reply to
Ecnerwal

If you need to cut a hole in the ceiling with blown-in insulation, just find your location in the attic, cut the bottom out of a cardboard box or build a plywood one, rake insulation away from the area, then use the box as a dam to restrict the loose stuff from recollecting around the hole. When finished, remove box, rake insulation back into place.

RJ

insulation.

Reply to
Backlash

Thanks for the Miraflex suggestion; I'll check with Lowe's next week. As usual their WEB page is useless. Could it be that Lowes and Home Despot designed each other's WEB pages .

Reply to
keith bowers

Here you go Keith

http://www.owenscorn>

Reply to
Backlash

Check out this site for foam info, interesting stuff.

formatting link

Reply to
AHS

Reply to
Stu Fields

Yeah, their claim to fame is that their product destroyed a space shuttle.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Coffman

I'll second that one. HUGE improvement with spray foam - seals up water leaks from popped screws too!

Reply to
Portly Stout

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:10:44 -0500, "Backlash" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

Question. Is it glass or plastic? I have tried some poly insulation (hate the itch as well) and it burned like a beaut!

Yeah! And no itch!

**************************************************** sorry remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Spike....Spike? Hello?

Reply to
Old Nick

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 02:10:10 GMT, "ATP" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

Interesting. Not trying to start fight. OOI. Can you show refs to that?

**************************************************** sorry remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Spike....Spike? Hello?

Reply to
Old Nick

I'm sure you could find some stuff by googling it. R-13 for 2x4 walls is just more glass than R-11, and there are denser fiberglass products that have far greater R value per inch than standard wall batts. In terms of R value per gram of fiberglass, compression probably reduces it, but for any given space it appears that you can cram a good bit more glass in there than the old standard batt and gain some R-value, certainly not destroy it, as we were once led to believe.

Reply to
ATP

If you go to a thicker batt and compress it, you will not get the advertised R, but you will get a higher R factor than using a batt that just fills the space. So using R-19 in a two by four wall will give you more insulation than the R-13 stuff. I don't know where I found this info. But will post here if I run across a ref.

Dan

Reply to
Dan Caster

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