Your videos are PRICELESS! Makes you wonder why builders are allowed by law to cut every single IMPORTANT corner in their shoddy quick build homes. I Live in texas and am shocked at how much was "missed" or omitted, but I bioght the home from the original owner and I'm always terrified of moisture and water intrusion via different ways, due to mold.
Dude same! I'm also in Texas and I'm trying to figure out how my house got so much mold on the back side of the drywall in a second story bathroom that had an un-airconditioned attic space behind it. It probably didn't help that the bathroom had wallpaper on an exterior wall (I think it's considered an exterior wall even though it's just attic space behind it)... Coupled with paper faced insulation creating a moisture sandwich. It was bad. But even one of the other walls not exposed to the outdoor temperatures had a ton of it on the back side of the drywall too so I'm suspecting that I have some pretty bad air leakage happening and maybe not enough insulation above. Or maybe not enough attic exhaust ventilation since it's kind of blocked off from the main part of the attic that has the vent... I don't know if my house just sucks because of a design flaw or if they cut corners when it was being built, but one thing is for sure: I'll never buy another drywall product that has paper on it ever again after this experience. Think I'm going to buy Densarmor plus for literally every room in the house after I figure out what's causing these condensation problems. Unfortunately the only way you find out about these things is after it's too late
@shaquileoatmeal7365 the bathroom especially needs to be tightly vapor sealed at the walls and ceiling. It also is critical to have the appropriate sized vent fan and the ductwork for the fan is properly sealed and routes to the outside, along with that, I would get a fan switch with a humidity sensor built into it so that the fan will turn on anytime there's moisture in the air.
I wish you would do a series on post frame construction. AKA: Barndominium. I see so many people that build them incorrectly causing huge problems down the road.
A good overview. That said, I have lived in an old 1909 semi-vented (ridge vent, no soffit or gable end vents) home in Zone 5 (southern CT) for 35 years. My attic is insulated with about 10” of loose fiberglass. The only ceiling plane air sealing is drywall that is penetrated in a couple of places by junction boxes for surface mounted ceiling fixtures. Probably because my house is relatively leaky and we let dogs in and out many times a day that humidity inside the house fluctuates by season. We are not a museum or swimming pool. I have looked into the attic many times and have observed no condensation on framing. All of the framing and sheathing is solid lumber that can function as a moisture absorbing “buffer” if there are short episodes of higher than desirable attic humidity. What really worries me is bulk water and its ability to dry out in one direction or another. Maintenance of the roof, gutter and eave assemblies is critical.
It is possible that with no soffit venting and a ridge vent and loose fibreglass with unsealed penetrations, that you are drafting quite a bit of interior air through the assembly. One thing people don't mention much is that fibreglass needs to be encapsulated to achieve it's full r value. Otherwise a lot of air can flow through it circumventing it's purpose. So you may not have that cold of an attic air space and enough air flow to reduce condensation on the roof sheathing especially if the shingles you have breathe. Of course, that isn't good for your heating bill. We had a similar situation (house vintage, climate etc) and when the roofers did full ice and water, we got ice formation and mold on the back of the sheathing. Air sealing, balancing the venting, and adding an HRV solved that. Btw, do you find your ridge vent gets covered in snow? As aesthetically pleasing as they are vs traditional vents, I wonder about how effective they are in a northern climate once they are buried in snow...
Wow so much info crammed into one video! I watch everyone else's videos at 1.5 or 1.75 speed cause there's so much fluff but yours i have to watch twice to catch it all
You say spray foam can off gas for months or years. I heard this but I’ve yet to find any written/experimental data to show this. All the literature that I’ve found says as quick as 2-4hrs or 24-48hrs max. Do you have any literature to share that shows the months or year of off gassing
@@bhagen38 Yes we do, we will be releasing a video on this sometime in December discussing this in depth, but to summarize what will be a lengthy video...The 24-48 hour figure that's thrown out there is based on ASTM standard D7706 which is a microchamber test of an extremely small sample of foam to test VOCs. They heat up the foam sample to release the gasses/VOCs and it's primary use is as a rapid diagnostic tool. It is intended to complement, not replace reference methods for measuring chemical emissions. Again, we're going to discuss this in depth, but the size of the foam sample matters a lot, since a tiny piece of foam will offgass much quicker than a thick build up which slowly releases off-gassing chemicals.
My ceilings were textured at one time, and someone tried to smooth them out and did a horrible job. I decided to rent the big vac, suck all the cellulose out of the attic, gut the house and start fresh. I now have Rockwool then Siga Majrex on my walls behind my drywall and my ceiling is Certainteed membrane taped to the Majrex and all the interior top plates. I was able to tape around all the wires going through my top plates with Siga rissan tape and I strapped the ceiling with furring so none of my puck lights are a hole into the attic. There is a small slit in the membrane that the wire for them comes through from the box above and that is taped around as well. I then blew in new cellulose, about 18” was as deep as I could go with the pitch of the roof.
If using this approach shown at 8:50 with a scissor truss in climate zone 4A would there be a problem if the cellulose was not in full contact with the roof sheathing the entire length of the rafter? I want to take advantage of the double air barrier.
5:27 all great points made, except that rigid wood fiber boards are not airtight, even if joints get primed+taped. They can indeed be used in exterior insulations as wind-tight layers, meaning they have enough resistance to prevent wind-washing in cavities but can’t be used as a proper air barrier on the inside - unfortunately. This is a confusion that often occurs with these boards, which is why some countries like germany specify it as above in their building codes (for example. DIN 4108). Exception is if they get plastered over, so as a substitute to a gypsum boards.
Does cross ventilation work at all? We reroofed a person's home with little to no ventilation of the attic space on a flat roof. The customer wanted added insulation but we were not about to leave the roof deck exposed while another contractor came out to add more insulation through the roof side of the home. We did not want to leave the homeowner vulnerable during monsoon season and so we suggested added insulation above the roof deck. So by going from a cold roof to a hot roof we were still left to deal with the dead air below the existing deck. We noted to the homeowner that we were not insulation or hvac contractors and that a qualified hvac contractor could help with circulating the air in that now dead space. What could have been another way to go about this without too much increase in cost? If the insulation was added to the existing space below the roof deck, how would we vent the roof? I saw maybe 1 or 2 wall vents on the outside of the home only. Do these roof have cross ventilation? Thanks in advance. In New Mexico with many old flat roofs. Too many ventilation issues around town.
Is there a way to detect air leaks in the attic? I envision setting off colored smoke, pressuring the house somehow, and then looking for where the smoke comes through the attic. I'm sure someone has come up with a technique along those lines. Thanks.
Can lights can be cost effectively air sealed from below, by using solid led puck fixtures that seal from below. The cost of rock-wool or similar air-sealing covers from above is about 4x the cost of the replacement LED light puck.
A lot of the suggestions are deep retrofits that are pricey and rarely used. Adding continuous exterior insulation and then new roofing and then sleepers before installing a new roof is $$$. Most of these plans are great for new construction with a well financed owner. The toughest project is a medium priced retrofit - you want to follow best practices but you don't have an unlimited budget. For my northern NH house with a standing seam roof, I'm planning on a 2" air space on the interior attic ceiling, then foam boards and then mineral wool. Then I'll do 2" of polyiso and mineral wool on the 6" walls as part of my plan to convert the large attic space into a conditioned space. A mini split and some rising heat from the existing top floor will provide heating and cooling. I have inexpensive remote TP Link Tapo temp and humidity sensors that are in place already to give me a sense of the unconditioned conditions now. I'll keep them in place including in the vent spaces, post construction to monitor for problems.
Well, that's why we try to give you more than one way of addressing these assemblies, but some strategies are certainly more costly than others. We have another video on the channel called "Sometimes, It's Better NOT To Insulate", which is about not insulating if you cannot properly address air sealing and moisture management, as insulating reduces heat flow and the drying potential of these assemblies. It's a very careful balance.
@@ASIRIDesignsYes, you focus on a problem and give us lots of options in a short video. The drawings are very clear, and we know we can go to your website to get even more in depth information. I recommend your channel often and will be buying some of your publications once I get closer to my project.✌️
The method you mention has been done and has been proven to be effective in cold climates, and I plan on doing it as well. My house has a vented attic with closed soffits, so I will install vents in the soffits and follow the same retrofit you will be doing, except in my case I brought in a structural engineer to make sure I reinforce my roof properly. It's significantly cheaper and more reasonable for my 1900's home. I also live in northern NH, do you experience any issues with ice buildup? Last winter I did not notice any houses in the area with ice damming issues, including mine, although I have only lived in the area for a year now.
@@JRusse42 No ice buildup since I had a standing seam metal roof installed. Snow and ice quickly slide off roof - in fact so fast I hope to add snow fences on the roof since I get huge piles of snow where the roof overhangs. It's also been unusually warm the last few winters. In the past we would have many more sub zero nights.
I often find discussions of “insulating old attics” lacking when it comes to ranch style houses if you’re trying to achieve, for example, PGH levels of roof insulation (R-60 in my zone). The roofs are usually between 3/12 and 5/12 with 2x4 trusses. Rooftop insulation would be cost prohibitive and structurally dubious considering you don’t have much depth between top chords, and you don’t have the advantage of raised heels at the eaves for blown in. It seems the only cost effective path forward is to install baffles, spray foam the first foot or so from the eave between the baffle and attic floor, and then loose fill the rest of the attic. This still leaves the eaves under-insulated, but perhaps it’s good enough.
Do you do any work on heating systems? I find there's a TON of b/s around the different systems regarding comfort, cost, etc... Warmboard for example seems like an enormous waste of money. How much insulation under a radiant floor is another big question. Height of pipes in concrete and if it matters. If it's better to set them in foam very close to the surface, if it's better and possible to avoid concrete altogether. Mine is already done, and it's not great, so I'm already not happy. To get the comfort everyone spoke of it's very expensive. I want to save the next person the headache. The issue I find with this is intuitive is not necessarily true. I'd like to hear from someone who actually has a clue. Snake oil salesmen make anything sound right.
Relative Humidity: the word "relative" is doing a lot of work there. The phrasing in the video snagged my attention too for a moment. But: Because cold air holds less moisture, if you have warm air with some amount of humidity when it cools it still has the same amount of humidity, but the maximum of how much it can hold has gone down. Relative Humidity is a measure of "how full" is the air of humidity. So the same example above while still holding the same amount of humidity has a higher Relative Humidity because it is more full due to the capacity becoming lower. The fog from your freezer is the humidity condensing out of the warm outside air because that warm outside air is being cooled by the cold air dumping out of your freezer. It looks like the fog pours out, but this is just the surface of the cold air flow in contact with the warm air. Once warm air gets pulled in as cold flows out it contacts all the cold surfaces and cools as well making more humidity condensate out of saturation in the form of fog and eventually leading to ice crystals on solid surfaces after repeated cycles of this.
*A Guide To Moisture Management For Residential Remodels eBook:* asiri-designs.com/shop/ols/products/moisture-management-for-residential-remodels
Your videos are PRICELESS! Makes you wonder why builders are allowed by law to cut every single IMPORTANT corner in their shoddy quick build homes. I Live in texas and am shocked at how much was "missed" or omitted, but I bioght the home from the original owner and I'm always terrified of moisture and water intrusion via different ways, due to mold.
Thank you very much! We wonder the same thing, especially from a reputation standpoint as well. Unfortunately it's business as usual.
We build the houses ppl pay for. Most ppl wont spend the money for quality built. The minimum standards are just that.
The government will also tell you you're incapable and you must hire these "professionals" 🇺🇲
Dude same! I'm also in Texas and I'm trying to figure out how my house got so much mold on the back side of the drywall in a second story bathroom that had an un-airconditioned attic space behind it. It probably didn't help that the bathroom had wallpaper on an exterior wall (I think it's considered an exterior wall even though it's just attic space behind it)... Coupled with paper faced insulation creating a moisture sandwich. It was bad. But even one of the other walls not exposed to the outdoor temperatures had a ton of it on the back side of the drywall too so I'm suspecting that I have some pretty bad air leakage happening and maybe not enough insulation above. Or maybe not enough attic exhaust ventilation since it's kind of blocked off from the main part of the attic that has the vent... I don't know if my house just sucks because of a design flaw or if they cut corners when it was being built, but one thing is for sure: I'll never buy another drywall product that has paper on it ever again after this experience. Think I'm going to buy Densarmor plus for literally every room in the house after I figure out what's causing these condensation problems. Unfortunately the only way you find out about these things is after it's too late
@shaquileoatmeal7365 the bathroom especially needs to be tightly vapor sealed at the walls and ceiling. It also is critical to have the appropriate sized vent fan and the ductwork for the fan is properly sealed and routes to the outside, along with that, I would get a fan switch with a humidity sensor built into it so that the fan will turn on anytime there's moisture in the air.
I wish you would do a series on post frame construction. AKA: Barndominium. I see so many people that build them incorrectly causing huge problems down the road.
Thanks for the good Info
A good overview. That said, I have lived in an old 1909 semi-vented (ridge vent, no soffit or gable end vents) home in Zone 5 (southern CT) for 35 years. My attic is insulated with about 10” of loose fiberglass. The only ceiling plane air sealing is drywall that is penetrated in a couple of places by junction boxes for surface mounted ceiling fixtures.
Probably because my house is relatively leaky and we let dogs in and out many times a day that humidity inside the house fluctuates by season. We are not a museum or swimming pool. I have looked into the attic many times and have observed no condensation on framing. All of the framing and sheathing is solid lumber that can function as a moisture absorbing “buffer” if there are short episodes of higher than desirable attic humidity.
What really worries me is bulk water and its ability to dry out in one direction or another. Maintenance of the roof, gutter and eave assemblies is critical.
It is possible that with no soffit venting and a ridge vent and loose fibreglass with unsealed penetrations, that you are drafting quite a bit of interior air through the assembly. One thing people don't mention much is that fibreglass needs to be encapsulated to achieve it's full r value. Otherwise a lot of air can flow through it circumventing it's purpose. So you may not have that cold of an attic air space and enough air flow to reduce condensation on the roof sheathing especially if the shingles you have breathe. Of course, that isn't good for your heating bill. We had a similar situation (house vintage, climate etc) and when the roofers did full ice and water, we got ice formation and mold on the back of the sheathing. Air sealing, balancing the venting, and adding an HRV solved that.
Btw, do you find your ridge vent gets covered in snow? As aesthetically pleasing as they are vs traditional vents, I wonder about how effective they are in a northern climate once they are buried in snow...
Wow so much info crammed into one video! I watch everyone else's videos at 1.5 or 1.75 speed cause there's so much fluff but yours i have to watch twice to catch it all
Truly, this video is a miracle for me right now. Thank you! Just subscribed. Cheers!
Fantastic videos!, thank you, from UK
Excellent overview.
Question : ridge vent cap with vented attic instead of roof vent on the face of the roof?
You're doing amazing work! Cheers!
Great content. Liked and subscribed.
You say spray foam can off gas for months or years. I heard this but I’ve yet to find any written/experimental data to show this. All the literature that I’ve found says as quick as 2-4hrs or 24-48hrs max. Do you have any literature to share that shows the months or year of off gassing
@@bhagen38 Yes we do, we will be releasing a video on this sometime in December discussing this in depth, but to summarize what will be a lengthy video...The 24-48 hour figure that's thrown out there is based on ASTM standard D7706 which is a microchamber test of an extremely small sample of foam to test VOCs. They heat up the foam sample to release the gasses/VOCs and it's primary use is as a rapid diagnostic tool. It is intended to complement, not replace reference methods for measuring chemical emissions. Again, we're going to discuss this in depth, but the size of the foam sample matters a lot, since a tiny piece of foam will offgass much quicker than a thick build up which slowly releases off-gassing chemicals.
My ceilings were textured at one time, and someone tried to smooth them out and did a horrible job. I decided to rent the big vac, suck all the cellulose out of the attic, gut the house and start fresh. I now have Rockwool then Siga Majrex on my walls behind my drywall and my ceiling is Certainteed membrane taped to the Majrex and all the interior top plates. I was able to tape around all the wires going through my top plates with Siga rissan tape and I strapped the ceiling with furring so none of my puck lights are a hole into the attic. There is a small slit in the membrane that the wire for them comes through from the box above and that is taped around as well. I then blew in new cellulose, about 18” was as deep as I could go with the pitch of the roof.
Strapping the ceiling -- might be near the top of the list for benefit. Thanks
9:10 Why is a plumber installing attic insulation?
That is Mario's cousin Marcel, he's an insulator
He has to keep his princess warm
What program are you using on your tablet to draw with a stylus?
If using this approach shown at 8:50 with a scissor truss in climate zone 4A would there be a problem if the cellulose was not in full contact with the roof sheathing the entire length of the rafter? I want to take advantage of the double air barrier.
The diagram shown at 8:50 is how I would like to build in 4A. This is acceptable correct? Some people online say no and some have recommended it.
5:27 all great points made, except that rigid wood fiber boards are not airtight, even if joints get primed+taped. They can indeed be used in exterior insulations as wind-tight layers, meaning they have enough resistance to prevent wind-washing in cavities but can’t be used as a proper air barrier on the inside - unfortunately. This is a confusion that often occurs with these boards, which is why some countries like germany specify it as above in their building codes (for example. DIN 4108).
Exception is if they get plastered over, so as a substitute to a gypsum boards.
Does cross ventilation work at all? We reroofed a person's home with little to no ventilation of the attic space on a flat roof. The customer wanted added insulation but we were not about to leave the roof deck exposed while another contractor came out to add more insulation through the roof side of the home. We did not want to leave the homeowner vulnerable during monsoon season and so we suggested added insulation above the roof deck. So by going from a cold roof to a hot roof we were still left to deal with the dead air below the existing deck. We noted to the homeowner that we were not insulation or hvac contractors and that a qualified hvac contractor could help with circulating the air in that now dead space. What could have been another way to go about this without too much increase in cost? If the insulation was added to the existing space below the roof deck, how would we vent the roof? I saw maybe 1 or 2 wall vents on the outside of the home only. Do these roof have cross ventilation? Thanks in advance. In New Mexico with many old flat roofs. Too many ventilation issues around town.
Can you come to Minneapolis?
Let’s go in together. Can’t find any company worth their salt to go into this much detail locally
@ been doing diy on my 1920s house
Is there a way to detect air leaks in the attic? I envision setting off colored smoke, pressuring the house somehow, and then looking for where the smoke comes through the attic. I'm sure someone has come up with a technique along those lines. Thanks.
@@ajcarrico1 Yes theatrical fog + positive pressure on the interior is a great way to detect air leaks.
@ASIRIDesigns Is there an easy way to pressurize a house for this purpose? Thank you.
Can lights can be cost effectively air sealed from below, by using solid led puck fixtures that seal from below. The cost of rock-wool or similar air-sealing covers from above is about 4x the cost of the replacement LED light puck.
A lot of the suggestions are deep retrofits that are pricey and rarely used. Adding continuous exterior insulation and then new roofing and then sleepers before installing a new roof is $$$. Most of these plans are great for new construction with a well financed owner. The toughest project is a medium priced retrofit - you want to follow best practices but you don't have an unlimited budget. For my northern NH house with a standing seam roof, I'm planning on a 2" air space on the interior attic ceiling, then foam boards and then mineral wool. Then I'll do 2" of polyiso and mineral wool on the 6" walls as part of my plan to convert the large attic space into a conditioned space. A mini split and some rising heat from the existing top floor will provide heating and cooling. I have inexpensive remote TP Link Tapo temp and humidity sensors that are in place already to give me a sense of the unconditioned conditions now. I'll keep them in place including in the vent spaces, post construction to monitor for problems.
Well, that's why we try to give you more than one way of addressing these assemblies, but some strategies are certainly more costly than others. We have another video on the channel called "Sometimes, It's Better NOT To Insulate", which is about not insulating if you cannot properly address air sealing and moisture management, as insulating reduces heat flow and the drying potential of these assemblies. It's a very careful balance.
@@ASIRIDesignsYes, you focus on a problem and give us lots of options in a short video. The drawings are very clear, and we know we can go to your website to get even more in depth information. I recommend your channel often and will be buying some of your publications once I get closer to my project.✌️
The method you mention has been done and has been proven to be effective in cold climates, and I plan on doing it as well. My house has a vented attic with closed soffits, so I will install vents in the soffits and follow the same retrofit you will be doing, except in my case I brought in a structural engineer to make sure I reinforce my roof properly. It's significantly cheaper and more reasonable for my 1900's home.
I also live in northern NH, do you experience any issues with ice buildup? Last winter I did not notice any houses in the area with ice damming issues, including mine, although I have only lived in the area for a year now.
@@JRusse42 No ice buildup since I had a standing seam metal roof installed. Snow and ice quickly slide off roof - in fact so fast I hope to add snow fences on the roof since I get huge piles of snow where the roof overhangs. It's also been unusually warm the last few winters. In the past we would have many more sub zero nights.
I got spray foam in the rafters, 9 inches of open cell in a 1939 home .
I often find discussions of “insulating old attics” lacking when it comes to ranch style houses if you’re trying to achieve, for example, PGH levels of roof insulation (R-60 in my zone). The roofs are usually between 3/12 and 5/12 with 2x4 trusses. Rooftop insulation would be cost prohibitive and structurally dubious considering you don’t have much depth between top chords, and you don’t have the advantage of raised heels at the eaves for blown in. It seems the only cost effective path forward is to install baffles, spray foam the first foot or so from the eave between the baffle and attic floor, and then loose fill the rest of the attic. This still leaves the eaves under-insulated, but perhaps it’s good enough.
Do you do any work on heating systems? I find there's a TON of b/s around the different systems regarding comfort, cost, etc...
Warmboard for example seems like an enormous waste of money. How much insulation under a radiant floor is another big question. Height of pipes in concrete and if it matters. If it's better to set them in foam very close to the surface, if it's better and possible to avoid concrete altogether.
Mine is already done, and it's not great, so I'm already not happy. To get the comfort everyone spoke of it's very expensive. I want to save the next person the headache. The issue I find with this is intuitive is not necessarily true. I'd like to hear from someone who actually has a clue. Snake oil salesmen make anything sound right.
Fact check cold air hold more moisture hence the desert is dry and so is my oven my freezer is full of fog.
@@bureauoflandmanagementblm3828 That is categorically wrong.
@@bureauoflandmanagementblm3828 🤣🤣🤣
Relative Humidity: the word "relative" is doing a lot of work there. The phrasing in the video snagged my attention too for a moment.
But:
Because cold air holds less moisture, if you have warm air with some amount of humidity when it cools it still has the same amount of humidity, but the maximum of how much it can hold has gone down. Relative Humidity is a measure of "how full" is the air of humidity. So the same example above while still holding the same amount of humidity has a higher Relative Humidity because it is more full due to the capacity becoming lower.
The fog from your freezer is the humidity condensing out of the warm outside air because that warm outside air is being cooled by the cold air dumping out of your freezer. It looks like the fog pours out, but this is just the surface of the cold air flow in contact with the warm air. Once warm air gets pulled in as cold flows out it contacts all the cold surfaces and cools as well making more humidity condensate out of saturation in the form of fog and eventually leading to ice crystals on solid surfaces after repeated cycles of this.