Update on insulation

My insulation piece yesterday generated some questions so I thought perhaps I would get more detailed here. There are a ton of great resources available on the web and I’ll try to compile a few here as well as inform you from my experience.

First things first-rebates

One rebate I mention is a sale that Lowe’s is having currently where they will give you a $100 gift card if you spend $300 on insulation. Each household is eligible for 2 gift cards. The sale goes on until 11/29. (Their site is down so I can’t provide you a link to their site but it was in their adsheet.)

I also mention the energy tax credits. This is part of the recent energy bill that was passed into being and exists for 2006 and 2007. The cost of your energy efficient upgrades can count on your income tax statement as a tax credit. (This credit doesn’t approach the billions that oil companies get while they are extracting billions in profits from consumers, but it’s a start) It applies to energy star rated items, like insulation, windows, doors, etc. Click here for more info and make sure to ask your tax person.

One other place you can check for rebates on energy efficiency upgrades is your local utility. My local utilities give out plenty of rebates, which I have used plenty of times. Check with your local company to see what they offer.

The thing to remember is which company will appreciate your efficiency gains and check with that company. A new natural gas furnace or water heater would be the gas company. But a new A/C or fridge would be the electric company. For things like windows, doors and insulation you’ll have to check each to see who covers it, if you have more than one company like we do here in Iowa.

Second things second–installation

I had a plethora of questions asked about installing the insulation. I hadn’t thought about installation questions in my previous post because I’ve seen so many This Old House, HomeTime and other home improvement shows that this is old hat to me. (Between those shows and the History Channel it’s a wonder I got any studying done in college) But it’s not old hat to everyone and I should remember that. So here goes. This is what I know about insulation, which may or may not be right, because I’m no expert, that is for sure. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the chance to slid that in there)

Vapor Barrier
If you are insulating a room you need to pay attention to the vapor barrier issue. If you are insulating a space that doesn’t have any insulation currently then you want to buy insulation that has a vapor barrier. Install the vapor barrier towards the living space portion of the house. The vapor barrier is supposed to keep the moisture in the house to prevent water from condensing in the insulation and ruining it, and your walls.

If you are placing additional insulation into a space (like an attic) where insulation already exists you want to use unfaced insulation because adding an additional vapor barrier to the insulation is unnecessary (the original insulation should have a barrier). If for some reason the original insulation doesn’t have a barrier you don’t want to install new stuff on top with a barrier that will cause water to condense at the barrier on the new insulation. Water is bad news for just about everything related to a house.

Installing insulation
If you want to add more insulation to existing insulation you can buy unfaced insulation and just put it over the top of the old insulation. There is no need to remove the old stuff. It’s that simple.

Additionally, you want to make sure to buy insulation that fits the space you are placing it in. If you are doing an attic this isn’t as critical because, in theory, you have unlimited space towards the attic space and you can buy the thickest you want. But for a wall it is critical because you don’t want to compress the insulation. If you compress the insulation it will lose it’s insulating properties. So if you have a 2×4 wall use R-11 or R-13. If it’s 2×6 use R-19. Don’t shove R-19 into a 2×4 space because you’re just wasting your money. The airiness of insulation is what causes it to be insulating and if you compress the insulation it won’t be airy anymore.

For example, check out the picture to the right. This is a picture of our upstairs living space. We have a story and a half house and when we bought it we ripped down the wallboard to insulate this space. (Unfortunately we ran out of money for drywall…but that worked out well for this picture…2 years later…)

What you see here is R-13 (white stuff) installed in the areas that are 2x4s, basically the walls and the ceiling. The brown paper insulation is R-39 which is installed in the kneewall areas where there is sufficient room available for the insulation. Behind the kneewall is the attic space that acts as the ceiling for the downstairs living areas. Between the joists I installed R-39 as well.

All the home improvement stores have huge charts up that will show you want to use for your area of the country and for the type of space you are trying to fill.

Another thing to remember is air flow. If you are installing insulation into a cavity that is on the underside of a roof you want to either install baffles for air to flow behind the insulation, or leave the insulation out far enough that air can flow under the roof between the insulation and the bottom of the roof. This air flow cools the roof and keeps your shingles from getting cooked on hot days. It extends the life of your shingles by at least twice what you can expect with no air flow. Here is an example of what I mean.

Air infiltration
You can insulate until the cows come home, but if you don’t keep the warm and cold air where you want them you aren’t going to get ahead much. So, when you are insulating a space make sure to look for any holes that poke through the area and fill the holes with caulk or insulating spray foam to stop the air leaks. Plumbing pipes, electrical pipes and vent pipes are common culprits. Insulate (or caulk) around the pipe first to stop the air leak by plugging the gap between the wood and the pipe. Then cover the area with insulation to stop the temperature passage from the outside wall.
(Click here for example pics from the manufacturer)

They call this stuff Great Stuff and it really is great stuff.

Honestly, that’s all there is to know. Installing insulation is easy. Usually people try to make it seem harder than it is, which is a normal human tendency, but the basics aren’t hard at all.

I have some links below that can help you out even more.

This Old House (great site)

FAQs

Simply Insulate (also great)

Bob Vila aint’ got nothing on me

Well, I finally insulated the attic above our family room. I’ve always felt that this space probably wasn’t insulated and I was right. It basically had no insulation in it. Well I fixed that. (With help from my wife and kids who helped me measure the pieces and then hand them up to me when I was wedged into the attic)

Here are the stats:

Insulation installed:R-50 (2 layers of R-25) for 14 rolls. (I bought 20 and have 6 leftover which I’m going to use to insulate the rim joist area of my basement.)

Money spent: $320 for 20 rolls. (with a $100 gift card coming back from Lowe’s for spending over $300 on insulation, so really $220.  And don’t forget that insulation costs are eligible for a tax credit when you do your taxes this year.  Ask your tax person.)

Hours spent: Approximately 6 total hours spread across 4 people.

Power tools used: 1 (I had to cut an access panel in the ceiling with the reciprocating saw.)

If was incredibly easy.  If you have been hesitant to do something like this don’t be.  The home improvement centers have easy directions on how to do it (or the internet) and it is fairly inexpensive.  You’ll notice the comfort change immediately and just feel better about yourself afterwards.

Here are some pics.

Insulation stored in my screen porch.

Before

After

FGLB

On being patriotic…

I’m not an especially patriotic person.  I’m patriotic enough, but I’m not the kind of person who you will see protesting gregarious uses of the flag or making sure to hang my flag out on certain days.  But I do think that there is a certain amount of respect that people need to show towards their country.  It’s really not the country itself that I think they should respect, but all the efforts of all the great leaders, and brave heros from our history that the flag represents.  Obviously one representation of this is the national anthem sung before sporting events.

Personally I like the national anthem being sung before games, although most of the time it is overly dramatic and I think disrespectful in the way it’s presented.  But there are a few things that I can’t stand when the national anthem is being sung.

At the end of the song don’t end with “…and the home of the (insert home team name here).”  I can’t stand that.  At all.  It is one of the few things that actually makes me want to punch someone right in the face.  I have mostly only noticed this occurring at professional sports, and mostly football games, for some reason.  But I can’t think of anything more disrespectful to our history than this.  It’s like you can’t even get through the whole song before you let you love for artificial sports idols override your civic pride.  Although it does sound really gnarly when 80,000 (well, 79,999) people all say it at the same time, but the teams should come up with a song that they can twist to have this happen, not the national anthem.

Take off your freaking hat.  Amazingly this doesn’t seem to happen every single time.  The percentage is pretty high, but anything less than 100% is not high enough.  If one of my kids left their hat on during the national anthem I can promise you they will feel my hand against the back of their head.  And I think that is plenty justified.  You just don’t do that.  It’s kind of like going into a unisex bathroom and taking care of business and then leaving it without cleaning up any sprinkling that may have occurred (as a man).  You just don’t do that either.  It’s disrespectful.

I also can’t stand it when people eat during the national anthem.  Yes, this does happen.  I stood next to a jackass at a hockey game two Saturdays ago who was eating his sandwich during the anthem.  I’m actually still shocked that this happened.  There aren’t too many people in America who can’t stand to wait a few minutes for a meal, regardless of how hungry they are.

At least he took off this hat first.

FGLB

Leaves, leaves everywhere leaves…

Been super busy lately. Working a lot, helping people move, been sick and working on some home improvements. I should start getting some home improvements finished this weekend so stay tuned. Until then here are some beautiful pictures.

This is what the bed of a truck looks like when you jam three yardys full of leaves into it and smash them down with an empty trash can.

Here’s a pic of our corn stove doing triple duty. It’s heating our house (it’s a nice 69 degrees right now), it’s drying our clothes and it’s also drying some jalapenos. You can barely see them as little hanging things to the right of the very interesting sweater. I think I might be in trouble for that ending up on the WWW for all to see.

How about it readers? Feel like trying the 100 Mile Thanksgiving?

FGLB

Tag out at schools?

Say what?

You know, I was the fat kid when I was growing up and I was never very fast. But it didn’t turn me into a wimp and make me not want to play games like tag. I still played. I just had to use my brain a little more to catch the fast ones.

And when I got way too slow to play then I moved on to other sports that didn’t require a lot of speed. Baseball, football & tetherball all come to mind.

With all the obesity in our society some things need to change. I very highly doubt it will be the food system (which is too bad) so why take away the other side of the teeter totter and get rid of exercise? Taking away gym class and recess is already bad enough. Now tag?

You know what this smacks of to me? People who aren’t willing to sack up and be parents. You know what? Maybe you’re kid is slow and isn’t very good at tag, but so what? Go outside and do other things with them so they can develop other interests. Teach them that it’s OK to do things for fun even if they aren’t the best at it. Having fun with what you’re doing is more important than being the best tag player, or the best soccer player or the best person on the monkey bars. If you have fun why does it matter?

Turn off the TV, get involved with your kids and be a freaking parent.

FGLB

Corn delivery

We had our first batch of corn delivered yesterday. I thought you might enjoy some pictures of the big event.

This is a pic of the truck that delivers the corn. It has a boom arm that you can see behind it that we position over the barrels and the corn comes through that and down into our barrels.

This is a picture of the corn guy, PJ, lining up the auger. I like to stand around PJ when he’s here. He makes me feel small, which doesn’t happen very often.

Here’s a picture of my best side doing what I do best, watching. PJ’s doing all the work. Except you don’t see me lugging the 600 lb containers back into the garage for storage.

Picture of the loose corn in a yardy.

Here is all the corn. We only had 2500 pounds delivered this time. But it filled up 4 yardys and half of one trash can.

And here is a picture of the beautiful flame warming up our house. Having a corn stove in the basement is awesome. The floors are always warm and we can heat the house up much more easily than with the furnace.

If you ask me, corn stoves are a lot better use for corn than feeding them to cattle or making ethanol out of them.

FGLB

Winter cycling

Now that the temperatures outside are starting to cool down you can say it’s about time to put the bicycle away for the winter. Well, you can say that, but I say Heck No! My favorite cycling time of the year is fall, winter and spring. I can’t stand the heat and humidity of the summer months. If you feel like being adventurous keep the bike out longer this winter and see how you feel. I think you’ll enjoy it. I have some helpful tips for you. You’ll need to make some adjustments, but I bet you already have all the things you’ll need.

To read more click here.

I would solicit comments on the GG site from you bikers so that others may be better informed.

FGLB

It’s raceday!

Well today was the day of the race. It was certainly interesting.

Zach was SO excited that he could hardly contain himself. He was on a mission on the way into the track and that was to see the track with the race cars on it. He didn’t want to stop at the displays to see the real NASCAR cars or get any snacks from the food stands. NO! He didn’t have to go to the bathroom. He had to see the race cars! He was zeroed in on the race cars.

So we hustled up to the grandstands to get our seats. And we waited. We waited through all the announcements and babble over the loudspeaker. Finally the preacher did the envocation and then the national anthem came on, sung by Trick Pony. Then some F-16s flew over flown by the Iowa National Guard (when Z saw those he went crazy. He was just in awe of them. He was so busy staring at them he didn’t even get his camera up to take their picture) and then the announcer came on and he said those 4 famous words:

“Gentleman, start your engines”

And they fired up their big engines and I immediately realized that I should have brought ear plugs. And a gas mask for all the fumes. But Zach was still in awe of it all. He was watching the cars warm up around the track and jumping up and down. I can’t remember when I saw him that excited. (The noise was kind of nice because he couldn’t ask me a million questions but his poor little ears. Stupid dad. I forgot his coat too. We never forget stuff when Mom’s involved…)

That was really the best parts. I enjoyed watching this guy race. This is Juan Pablo Montoya. He’s pretty good. He’s just starting to race stock cars after racing open wheels for a long time. He looked like Ricky Bobby out there. Until he wrecked.

The funniest thing about watching the race in person is that you can’t watch everything, even on a small track. You kind of have to pick someone to watch and watch them. I was watching Montoya because it was like Pole Position out there for him.

Basically after about half the race Z said he wanted to go home. And that was it. He took about 20 pictures of the cars in action, and two trucks and pace cars. Frankly just about everything on the infield. Oh yeah, and a Hummer.

Some observations:

If you ever attend a race you must wear either A.) Carhartt clothing, B) Tons of racing gear or C) Camouflouge stuff. Although all three of these are prevalant in large quantities in any Iowa crowd.

Also, make sure you take some serious cash. Man, I thought the circus was bad…

FGLB

Last day at the market

Today was the last day at the market. I’m sad. The summer is officially over.

The day WAS made better by a sign I saw at the market this morning though.

“50 lbs of potatoes $22.”

Sweet! I thought I was going to be stuck buying potatoes from the store, but not now. Sign me up! I lugged that home and didn’t even get a sideways glance. (I think she’s getting use to it!)

We hit the orchard and pumpkin patch this afternoon. I only had 5 apples while in the orchard and only bought about 7 lbs worth so I did pretty good.

Of course, if I had known about this little challenge that Aaron threw out I would have spent my day differently. Now I’m a day behind.

I won some tickets to a race tomorrow at the Iowa Speedway and I’m talking my little guy. I’m not really a huge racing guy(it sure does waste a lot of fuel) but he likes race cars and the tickets were free so what the heck. I bet he’ll think it’s a ton of fun. I’ll have an update on that tomorrow probably.

But then I’m two days behind. Grrr

FGLB

Wintertime changes

I can’t believe how cold it’s gotten, and how fast. It went from the 60s to the low 30s and now it’s supposed to head back up to the 60s this weekend and next week. And we have some light snow yesterday morning.

I covered up the tomatoes and peppers, but I have very little hope that they made it through. It doesn’t cost me anything to cover them though so it’s worth a try. We can always hope it worked.

I’ve had some rather large changes in my life lately that are leading to my attention being diverted from this little slice of the web.

After finishing the posts about investing for the future and planning for my future in a Post Peak Oil world, I (we really) decided that I would get a PT job to facilitate a more rapid paydown of our debt. My investment in real estate after our move to Iowa hasn’t been as successful as it was in KC so our personal debt levels have approached a level that we aren’t comfortable with. It unfortunately led to my wife having to go back to work so we could remain on stable footing (something that I’ll never forgive myself for letting happen. Your kids are only young once idiot.) and now that our portfolio is pared down to one property, that is fairly easily managed, we are in a position that we can get rid of this onerous debt. So we are doing that, quite rapidly. The addition of a PT job will obviously allow this to happen much, much more quickly, although it comes at the ST cost of loss of family time and time spent working on this blog and at Groovy Green.

Additionally, my full-time employer and I have had a few go arounds in the past and we’ve come to the conclusion that I need to find a different place of employment. (I’m still employed for now) I’m not particularly concerned about this except for the potential for loss of pay which would impact our debt reduction plans, but sometimes that just happens. It’s also fairly exciting as there is always the chance for amazing new opportunities to present themselves when you step outside your comfort zone and push yourself. I hope that’s what happens.

This task is complicated by the fact that I’m pretty darn busy, but I’m also backed up by a great network of friends and family who can help pick up my slack during this period while my attention is otherwise diverted. Anyway, you may wonder where I am as I post less frequently. Just remember that all this is going on, and I still have two kids to help raise, at least a little. Winter is coming and for me winter is a time of reflection and contemplation (those are big words to say I read more books and do more thinking) and more of my writings will probably be about specific things and specific issues and less about what I’m actually doing whether it’s biking or gardening or whatever.

FGLB