After a long, long hiatus, I was finally able to get some work done on the house Monday. After buying the Roxul insulation last month, my Dad and I got a good portion of it put up.
The rafters of the house are two feet apart and the insulation is two feet as well. Piece by piece, I put the insulation between the rafters. This was a bit challenging as it was a tight fit, but that is exactly what we wanted. First, we installed a one-inch board up the center. This was to make sure that the insulation did not fit too tight against the boards, as there needs to be some room for air to circulate. (For this entry – pictures really are worth a thousand words).
We put two pieces of R23 insulation between each rafter. After putting the first one in, we cut the second piece in half so that the seams would be staggered. The two pieces of insulation gave us R46 in the ceiling.
The R-value is the measure of resistance to heat flow of a given material. The higher the R-value, the greater resistance to heat flow. The R-value of 46 that I have in the ceiling is pretty high, but then I am building in Maine. Hopefully it will help keep my heating costs down for years to come.
It was easy to put the insulation up in the loft area, but I am really dreading putting it up in the part with the cathedral ceiling. In retrospect, I keep questioning who thought that this design was a good idea? I’ve got nobody to blame for that but myself.
It was 49 degrees up in the loft and very comfortable. We have some insulation already in the walls so I was very pleased with the warmth, considering we have no heat source in the house whatsoever right now. The first floor was in the lower 40’s.
As we installed the insulation, we had the high school basketball tournament on the radio. There was no direct connection to either team, but what is more Maine than listening to the high school tournament? It was good to be back at the house.