Sawdust Insulation In Attic Old

If they are still light and fluffy they are still insulating your home although not the best of insulating materials.

Sawdust insulation in attic old.

In the original house insulation fiber is covered with hardboard so you don t breathe that fiber when you are in the attic. This page contains a list of research papers on the use of sawdust as an insulation material. Pull down stair or ladder. To improve the comfort of the home pictured above one solution is to remove the wood chip insulation and re insulate the entire attic cavity with blown in fibreglass insulation.

Affix rigid foam insulation to the attic side of the hatch or door. Attic insulation looks like sawdust. Commercial extruded polystyrene sheets and fiberglass insulation are expensive especially in the quantities required in solar passive homes hence the importance of local replacement materials. I have an old house with an attic that is insulated with saw dust.

Add weatherstripping around the perimeter and a sweep to the door of a walk up attic. I have warm attic in old part and cold attic in addition so i have both of those setups. My house has an original old part and a new addition. That is why we often just add new insulation right over the top of these old ones in an attic it is just not worth the mess of cleaning the old stuff out.

Vermiculite and perlite are older granulated insulations with relatively low r values which describes the product s thermal resistance. Use a zippered insulated tent to keep the enclosure draft free attic tent at 7 attic cover insulator 120. Shredded newspaper or loose fill cellulose was another common insulation in the past. Seaweed in the maritimes and sawdust in the rest of canada were common insulation materials in the old days.

Although insulation professionals will handle the installation for you here are some things to keep in mind about removing old insulation and installing new insulation over old insulation according to energy star. If your home is old enough 19th century your attic insulation that looks like sawdust could be sawdust. I have two questions. Faced insulation should not be placed on top of existing insulation in the attic.

1 what is the best bang for my buck ie vs r value 2 should i take out the sawdust before putting new insulation in. Sometimes wood products such as sawdust or balsa wood were used at insulation in old homes but these are very ineffective. All about wood chip insulation october 27 2014 1 01 am. Before you install insulation over the sawdust check the attic for old knob and tube wiring commonly installed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.

Newspapers sawdust catalogs and just about any cheap or free cellulose have all been used to provide minimal insulation in old homes. Knob and tube wiring is made of two individual wires that run through and are connected to porcelain insulators.