Wrapping up Insulation

The temperature chart in the root cellar

My insulating get-up. Note fangs

Insulating the walls and ceiling of the root cellar

The rim joist area before blowing the cellulose in the hole

Insulating was a lot of work and we finished it up on Thursday. This included insulating the root cellar roof and walls so that the earth temperature is the predominant heating/cooling force in the space. I tracked the temperature in the root cellar over the course of the spring and stopped early in July when it seemed to have leveled off around the high 50's/low 60's. I'll be very interested to watch what happens to the temperature now that the surface earth temperature is mitigated and the deeper-down earth temperature remains unhindered in its exposure.

After a couple of different tries I finally settled on wearing a dust mask, swimming goggles and a cycling cap to ward off the worst of the cellulose insulation blow-back in my face. Just as the cavity being filled nears capacity, there is often a powerful backwards shot of insulation that shoots right back towards the person doing the insulation. Its only manageable if you are well protected.

The last bit of house insulation was doing the spaces around the rim joist under the first floor--basically the band of area that is the first floor/attic ceiling around the perimeter of the house.

At this point the house is finally insulated, but we are going to do a just a little more cellulose blowing-in in a couple of spots, namely the walls of the bathrooms and a few inches under the second floor. This will be done for sound attenuation purposes. We want to minimize the sound transfer between the first and second floor and the bathrooms. Its not too much work and we decided that we'd just do it even though its a little more effort.