Insulating Historic Texas Home
I live in a 1910 stick-frame home in Texas that is completely uninsulated. We are fixing the pier and beam foundation right now so this is an opportune moment to add insulation to the underside of the floor. The crawlspace is unconditioned and we plan to add R-22 open-cell spray foam to the underside of the floor with a vented foundation skirt. We have long leaf pine hardwood floors — Should we be concerned about these buckling if we add the insulation?
We’re also going to use this opportunity to spray foam the underside of the roof with R-30. All of our ductwork is located in the attic so we figure this will be a pretty impactful move.
I welcome any comments you have on these strategies. Thanks!
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
If you are going the spray foam route I would use ccSPF and not have to worry about moisture.
User ...793,
My worry is that the spray foam doesn't bring the entire floor system into the conditioned space the way using something like continuous foam board on the underside of the joists does.
I don't know that much about hot climates, and maybe it isn't the worry it would be in more humid ones, but both using open cell foam, and having part of the the joists exposed to the unconditioned crawlspace seem like they could cause problems.
I really hate spray foam! It is so expensive and ungreen.
Consider making the crawls space conditioned space by insulating the exterior walls of the space and moving the HVAC into the crawlspace and filling the attic with lots of cheap fluffy insulation.
Seems like for less money you would get higher R values with a smaller surfaces area to leak energy.
Walta
https://youtu.be/VHPS5HC7VYw?si=FS34GYMIO2n53lSs
Some ideas on this video maybe.
Some more ideas.
https://youtu.be/ZLKPLqBI6Ow?si=5Ue4tbOOGiDNqiwm