So yesterday I cleaned Home Despot out of 1.5″ rigid insulation, which with fitting should be just enough to insulate the Lair’s floor. I had this really smart idea this morning, that I’d wait till the batteries were up to float and then I’d be able to cut the sections with my power saw. Then the clouds rolled in just as I began, around ten. So now I’m cutting and fitting between clouds, which isn’t working all that well. I guess I should go get the hand saw.
There are sixteen spaces between the floor joists to be insulated, and most of them can be done with a single sheet – for as long as my insulation holds out. The rest, the ones toward the rear of the Lair with plumbing and cabling, need to be fitted around anyway so the smaller bits won’t go to waste. It is starting to look like I didn’t buy enough Liquid Nails, so I’m economizing on the bigger pieces because I’ll definitely need it for the smaller ones.
It really is starting to look like we’re going to have an early monsoon this year. Very annoying.
Poor Elk. I knew you had something to do with his disappearance. I see the evidence right there.
He pulled a knife on me.
Can you do the old Kem Kadiddlehopper trick of stacking hay bales around your foundation in the fall? We still have a few older people doing it around here; not many cuz it’s uncool. If I had a convenient source of the rectangular bales I’d be doing it.
Good luck with the rest of the foam installation. I like the way the stuff performs but don’t like working with it.
I certainly could, and would – if the bales didn’t cost upwards of $10 each.
I did the ‘crawl underneath to insulate’ thing on a friends cabin… I learned the value of insulating the floor FIRST when building my own. That ‘Great Stuff’ expanding-foam-in-a-can is wonderful for such a project. It’s sticky as a mo-fo and once solidified it’s plenty strong to hold insulation in place, or join two pcs. together (with a little help from some hand carved pegs to keep them in position till it cures): http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/Phssthpok/cabin/cabin015-1.jpg
You can see here how the ‘Great Stuff’ (while expensive at $4/can) does a bang up job of not only holding the foam in place, but also filling in the odd gaps around the edges (note also the seams where some pcs were glued together): http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/Phssthpok/cabin/cabin016-1.jpg The edge-gap filling properties took a lot of the stress out of having to make the cuts ‘perfect’.
I was lucky enough to have a friend who worked at a walk-in cooler/freezer manufacturer. They use the industrial version of the ‘Great Stuff’ to fill their panels. Every so often they get a ‘blow out’ and they have to strip the metal skin off the frame, and cut out the foam for a re-shoot. Once hardened, the foam is useless to them so they have to pay someone to haul away the stacks that build up. When they found out someone was willing to take it for free, I had an endless supply for my cabin: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y32/Phssthpok/cabin/100_1442.jpg
(that’s a mix of 4″ and 6″ thick rigid foam that I drove over 600 miles to my remote cabin location).
That’s a deal breaker. Don’t know what they would cost here any more. Coarse grass hay is probably cheap enough, but almost everyone now harvests the ton-plus round bales.