Retrofit - Week 7

Yeeha, another week of rocking the retrofit! Shawn decided to postpone his honeymoon trip (I think he likes the abuse he and Sam give each other) which was a good thing because Peter was limping on an infected foot that landed him a quiet ("boring") weekend in the hospital. Our very capable crew kept going, though. Monday was all about finishing the framing out of the East wall and starting the South wall. Tuesday and Wednesday were finishing the South and working on the the West. Meanwhile, I was thoroughly cleaning out the attic space above the bathroom after finding some vermiculite insulation. Friday was all about playing with the dense-pack cellulose and sheeting the East wall. The insulation project seemed a bit less experimental after making the acquaintance of Gerard Gagnon, owner of Ace Insulation in Maine, who has done tons of dense packing in "fat walls" with no evidence of settling over time.

Saturday Amber and I met with Nagel-Built cabinets again and gave him the go ahead on some awesome cabinets. Then I did some wiring and plumbed a hose bib for the West wall so the framing can be completed.

On Monday I had to install two of the penetrations through the soon to be dense-packed wall: An air intake for the fireplace to be fitted with a mini-super-damper and an 18" hose bib wrapped in pipe insulation to avoid condensation.

This is what the south wall looked like on Monday afternoon.

Here is Jeff installing some settling sensors to test for settling. The theory is that the top sensors under a dividing ledge will become cold if the insulation settles below it. Next week we'll put some more sensors in throughout the thickness of a section of wall to test the thermal performance.

Here, Wayne puts the final touches on the word's first HUG Super-Damper. It's a 120 square inch opening (that's like a 12 inch duct) with an R30, stepped cone plug with double seals. Oooh yeah! That baby is gonna be the star in my whole-house vent and then close off like no other damper I've ever seen. It'll be on a thermostat that will tell it to open on summer evenings as it cools, or on sunny winter days when I have an excess of solar heat.

Dense-Packing Cellulose:

For absolute novices, I think we did pretty well. Mike manned the blower, kept it fed, and helped track how much insulation were putting into each section of wall to ensure proper density. I mostly ran the blower while Sam and Shawn sheeted the walls. under the windows we blew into insul-web sheeted areas before sheeting.

Here is an example of a cavity filled up to the top of the sheeting so far.

We recommended Selson-Blue for this condition, but Sam thought the "gray look" made him look more like me which he liked.