Last winter
when Jen and I were working on the house we noticed the downstairs
was significantly colder then the upstairs. Yes I know heat
rises and our heating ducts downstairs weren't always on/open, but
there was something seriously wrong with how cold it was down
there. You could tell as you walked down the hall it got colder as
you got closer to the door to the garage, but the door to the garage
is a nice tight weather door.
While working on some wiring
issue I found this above the ceiling tiles at the garage end of the
house. The last floor joist opened directly into the attic over
the garage. There was insulation in between the joist braces, but as
you can see the dark in the middle, it didn't exactly insulate. Cold
air was pouring directly into the basement ceiling from the garage
attic. When the wind blew outside, you could watch the cobwebs move
in the draft inside. This picture was taken Jan. 9th of this year. I
guess other more important projects kept us from fixing it
then.
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Another issue
with the open space is this little thing. This house obviously
had/has a mouse issue. With
the open space between the attic and
basement ceiling, the mice were running wild. This little hole was
one of many mice
highways into our house.
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Here's a shot of
almost the entire length. It spanned the entire width of the house.
It blows my mind that
this was never taken care of. You
might as well leave a window open all winter long.
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Here's looking in the opposite direction
from the shot above. This is the overhang that sits out over the
downstairs of our house. When I worked on the home network I had to
deal with this. It's basically a two ft.
deep, one ft. wide mouse
nest. The insulation is rotten with mouse "stuff." I pulled it all
out and vacuumed
the area thoroughly before doing the rest of the
job. Sometimes if I'm lucky, I'll find wires like this one
chewed through by the mice. Miraculously I did not find any
dead mice on this job.
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When
they put in our kitchen windows,
there was a lot of drywall leftover - either cut out of the wall, or
new. I'd kept it for just this project. It's been high on
my list for quite a while. It wasn't completely
necessary to do
in the summer, so I waited till cycling was over and it got colder.
The drop ceiling made things interesting. The height of the
gap was sixteen inches. The width from one
vertical brace to
another was thirtyseven inches. Luckily the 16"x37" pieces just fit
up through the ceiling
rails. I used the
garage as my drywall chop-shop.
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CJ was my helper
for the day.
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The
finished project. I debated using tape and joint compound on the
seams, but figured I had to use so
much spray insulation for all
the gaps, why not do the seams too. Already I've noticed the
basement no
longer gets colder as you walk to the garage door.
I'm hoping there's a difference in our heating costs
as
well.
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