'Tis the sealing season.
By Andrew Bennett
I haven’t got my assessment report back yet, but I expect I will soon enough. It doesn’t matter since I already have a fair idea of some of the things I need to do.
Each night cold air drips down my basement walls. I’ve put it off for long enough already: Insulate and seal up the rims and put blue foam wall to wall.
I won’t know until I get my report if it’s worth it to go for gold and insulate the basement to R-23, or if most of the energy savings are already realized at R-10 with a less expensive, thinner wall.
For me, an R-10 wall would probably end up, as I’ve seen in one home of good Rossland folk, a simple two-inch blue foam and plywood sandwich screwed up against the concrete wall. Shelves are attached directly to the the 3/4″ plywood, and thinner plywood covers areas of blank wall.
Going R-23 could go the route of another fine Rosslander who screwed in four-inch foam, tacked up 2x4s on their side, so they are only 1.5 inches deep, and put up drywall.
Maybe it’s petty, but I think of the lost space due to the wall. A 20-by-30 foot basement has 600 square feet. Over the wall’s length of 100 feet (the perimeter), a 6-inch wall takes up 24 square feet more than a 3-inch wall, about four per cent more of the floor.
While I think about that, I should probably be running around with caulk in hand sealing cracks. Honest work. Costs mere dollars. Weatherstripping, check. All that good stuff. Should-have-would-have done that anyway!
