Archive of posts tagged air seal
Air Sealing For Healthy Living
Air sealing is often associated with improving the energy efficiency of heating and cooling system. But there are other even more important benefits. Many of the cracks and gaps that let outside air in a house are located at the joints in the ceiling to the attic or on the floor over the crawlspace. That […]
How Do You Know You Have Enough Insulation In Your Attic
As time goes by, insulation in the attic can settle, resulting in the degradation of insulating property (measured in R-value). To find out if you have enough insulation in your attic, use a yardstick or tape measure to record the depth of the insulation. The Department of Energy recommends insulation for Northern climates to be […]
Is Your House Leaky?
Have you ever felt drafty in some rooms in your house? The draft can be coming through some hidden gaps or holes in your house. Most homes have gaps and holes in the ceiling, floors and exterior walls that let a lot of cold air into the house in the winter and warm air in […]
Energy Measures Are All In Place
After taking most of this 100 plus year old house to the studs, the energy efficiency measures were all in place. That includes Triple-pane windows (by Kohltech), air sealing throughout the house, blown-in cellulose insulation in attic with R-80 and in walls with R-18, 15 mil heavy-duty polyurethane liners lined the crawlspace and basement. (Yes, […]
Progressing Toward Air Sealing Goal
This house was so leaky that before any air sealing and insulation, the blower door could not be operated to reach 50 pascal pressure difference, which is the standard to measure air leakage. Tom and his team took a series of steps. Using the blower door along the way to measure the result of each […]
More Basement Sealing
The blower door test revealed that there was still room for improvement (see On-going Saga of Air Sealing). One of the areas of air leakage was from the basement. Tom and his crew checked and ensured that the polyurethane liners are well taped to the stem walls. They also added foam sealing over the tape […]
Attic Sealing and Insulation
The attic covers only part of the house. To insulate it, Tom’s crew placed 20 inches ( ) of loose fill cellulose. Blower door tests and infrared camera shots showed that the access to the attic was still leaky. They quickly placed two layers of foam board to close the access off and foam sealed […]
Wrapping the House for Air Tightness
When we decided to rewrap the house and replace the siding, we looked for a high performing house wrap. We chose the SIGA Majvest. This product is waterproof, windtight, tearproof while vapor porous. We will use a companion SIGA product, the Wigluv, to seal everything off. These SIGA products have been used widely in Europe […]