Home insulation tips

Hi Tom (and Dick),
Your tips in a recent column, Tom, advising homeowners to tighten up
against cold air infiltration and insulating
first, and improving the heating source second make sense. You may have
covered this before, but aside from
wrapping pipes, caulking around windows and doors, etc. but how about a
little more on a little more on adding
insulation to an existing house. Many homes built more than 20 years ago
have so-so insulation. How can a
homeowner add insulation to the attic, walls and cellar of an already
existing home? Does it make sense to strip off
wallboard and build out wall studs so thicker insulation can be added? If
so, which type -- fiberglass, rigid foam,
"pour-in," or a combination of these? Should a vapor barrier be placed on
the interior side of the insulation? OK to
add batts on top of existing attic insulation? If a budget doesn't permit
doing it all at once, which should be done
first?
Many thanks.
Elliott
Somesville

Hi Elliott,
I will be doing a column on this very soon. If this was a perfect world,
you should remove the siding and sheathing
and install 2" of foam. You would then re-sheath and reside, and move out
all the windows and doors to match up
with the thicker walls.
That might not work for 95% of the world, but if you are doing over the
exterior of the building, this is a great
project that will make a big impact on many homes!
Another alternative is to remove all the trim on the interior of a room's
exterior walls, add the 2" of foam, move all
the electric outlets and install new drywall. The downside of this process
is the places where interior partitions come
into an exterior wall. There would be a thermal "short circuit" at these
points, but you are still way ahead doing this.
I have to stop here, or I will have written the column. More to come.
Tom