Insulating floors? 2 rooms freezing cold
If there is a brick 3 story plus cellar building, the entire 3rd floor gets decent warmth, on the 2nd floor the southern 2/3 gets nice but the 2 bedrooms on the north are COLD, with floors nearly cold as ice cubes (I’m sure I’m exaggerating…)The radiators work btw, and a new window has been…
If there is a brick 3 story plus cellar building, the entire 3rd floor gets decent warmth, on the 2nd floor the southern 2/3 gets nice but the 2 bedrooms on the north are COLD, with floors nearly cold as ice cubes (I’m sure I’m exaggerating…)The radiators work btw, and a new window has been ordered for the smaller bedroom, the 1st floor is so-so. Any suggestions on what to do to improve things with severally limited funds? (and banks refusing to let people access their lines of credit!!) There’s already going to be $380 for the window including installation. Priority is the 2 bedrooms on the 2nd floor. Reason for cold could be the fact that the smaller bedroom is directly above the vestibule which is nearly as cold as outside. But the bigger one is not above the vestibule, why is it so cold? If I add a layer of insulation to vestibule ceiling and another sheetrock ceiling on top of existing ceiling would that work? What about spray insulation in the floors? Is that possible? How and what would cost be? Insulating the vestibule from outside is cost prohibitive as the main problem is the old original door with gaping holes at the top and the glass pieces are held in place with a metal grat! It’s a mess! But I prefer old original to new, but don’t have the $ to repair that now.
Insulate the floor/ceiling. The cold air in the vestibule is cooling off the bedrooms above it because the area between the joists transverses both rooms. I just dealt with this in my building.
Open up the ceiling in the vestibule along the wall that divides the vestibule from the rest of the house (not the outer building wall). I made an opening approximately 8″ wide the length of the room Insert insulation between the joist in the direction of the vestibule. I used a piece of lath to push the insulation deep across the area. In the other direction, you can insert more batting to help insulate and cut down on sound. I made a barrier (along the line of where the wall goes up) using foam core insulation and used expanding foam around the edges to seal the void between the joists from air infiltration coming from the source of cold (or letting warm air leak out – whatever your view point.)
(variation)
You could open up the ceiling on the inside of the building next to the vestibule, and then you could better detect the amount of cold air seeping in from the vestibule area. This method makes to harder to push the insulation all the way to the building wall over the vestibule, but makes to easier to make your barrier more air tight.
It made a significant difference in my building.
mopar has lots of good advice. I might also add, put down rugs in the bedroom if you don’t already have them. I actually got some pretty thick cheap rugs that I love at Ikea. Most of the thick ones I looked in this size were $500 (at Ikea!?!), but this one was well under $100. A thick pad might help some, too.
Also you can just hold up your hand to feel air coming through cracks around windows, etc. Check to make sure your windows are genuinely shut at the top. Sometimes they look shut bit aren’t really. Ours don’t shut and we are having them replaced but in the meantime we are taping plastic over them. You buy it at Home Depot in the weatherstripping section.
Some skilled door person can put wood pieces to cover those gaps and glaze and caulk the glass.
I can’t guess from here but in general:
*You want to get rid of air infiltration. Caulk, weatherstrip, have someone fix your existing door (don’t get rid of it). You may have air coming in at the top of windows, around doors, etc., and you may not even realize it. The front door issue you describe will definitely affect the room above.
*Its nice to have insulation in the attic, but we don’t have it and we don’t have cold rooms.
*Very few people have insulated walls. I’ve never heard of insulating floors.
Use heavy curtains around windows to keep out cold air.
If you want a professional to evaluate your home for air infiltration, check out the program at Neighborhood Housing Services (there’s one in East Flatbush). They have a list of approved vendors and will give low interest loans for making houses more energy efficient. It might be a bit of a racket, but it might not, I’m not sure.
I have sympathetically cold fingers. Our rear 2nd floor bedroom (which I use as my home office) juts out more exposed than the 1st and 3rd floors. I looked into spray insulation in the walls, but got scared off by the moisture-barrier issue — I don’t want to trade drafts for mold!
I must say that replacing the window and using some spray foam just beneath the gappy baseboards made a *hugely* noticeable improvement. I supplement the room radiators with one of those oil-filled portable radiators when I’m working.