Best Insulation for Small Extension
Hi brownstoners, Our small mud room in the rear of the house is absolutely freezing with major drafts coming in to the house to the point that the first floor is almost unlivable in this weather. We took the room down to the studs in November, threw some R-13 insulation and sheet rock up and…
Hi brownstoners,
Our small mud room in the rear of the house is absolutely freezing with major drafts coming in to the house to the point that the first floor is almost unlivable in this weather. We took the room down to the studs in November, threw some R-13 insulation and sheet rock up and that is obviously not helping at all. Any recommendations on what I can do to fix this? Should I throw my hands up and get a contractor in to fix this?
Thanks.
“Our small mud room in the rear of the house is absolutely freezing with major drafts coming in to the house to the point that the first floor is almost unlivable in this weather. We took the room down to the studs in November, threw some R-13 insulation and sheet rock up and that is obviously not helping at all.”
BedStuyTownhouse, we have a mudroom in the rear of the house. It’s not a proper extension like some people have, but all our neighbors have the same mudroom. It’s just studs sitting on a cement slab, no proper foundation. (In fact, the cement near the house is cracked because the joists it sits on are rotted although they’ve since been replaced.)
A few months ago, we insulated and covered the walls and ceiling with sheetrock. Didn’t really make any difference.
We have crazy amounts of air coming through the door and window. And while you cannot exactly see daylight between floor and walls — whenever the neighbor does their laundry, our mudroom floor floods. (Because their waste pipe empties into their yard.) Like I said, there’s no proper foundation, and nothing covering or sheathing the area where floor meets wall.
Strangely, the back of the house near the extension is not particularly cold. However, the floor above it certainly is.
We’re going to weatherstrip the door and window and then see where we are.
We have to do something to warm it up and fix the floor, since we need to reconstruct the back of the house plus the outhouse/bathroom off of it — so the pipes don’t freeze, since as it is they may as well be outside.
BS Maven – yes it is a large pipe. What you say makes sense given the location.
Bond – I will pick up a copy of Fine Homebuilding. I was also told that you wanted a little gap for optimization of the insulation. Who knew?
Rusty Bob – Three cans of spray foam from Home Depot helped quite a bit in the band-aid department but I think I’ve got to take it down to the studs and start over by spray foaming the entire room and then going over that with fiberglass insulation.
i wonder if the canned spray foam available at Lowes would work?
Fine Homebuilding has an interesting article on insulating a space in this month’s issue. They are recomending a relatively thin layer of spray, followed by a fiberglass batt. They are also stating that compressing the insulation actually increases the R value, which is the opposite of what I was taught. Live and learn.
bedstuytownhouse – is it a large pipe. I have one in my extension as well. It carries water from the roof to the main drain.
BTW – FML!!!
Mopar – the upstairs are dreadfully hot. What do you mean by same methods, same results? Meaning no improvement?
There is a strange pipe, which I cannot imagine what it is for, in this structure which is where a lot of the leaking air was coming in from – not the pipe itself but from around it. This is where I sealed with spray foam and it helped. We have a large furniture piece in the room which blocked the fact that you can see daylight (wtf?!?!) where the sheet rock and floor meet. Also spray foamed this and that helped.
Maly, our mudroom in Bed Stuy has a cement slab directly on the ground. There is no proper foundation.
We have the same problem and did exactly the same thing with exactly the same results.
I suspect that when we get around to properly weatherstripping the door and windows, we will solve the problem.
Also, though, we have one of those storm screen doors, and it seems to keep the mudroom cold out of the first-floor hall pretty well. The upstairs rooms above it are cold, though.