[Greenbuilding] Ceiling Fans at Night?

[Bob Waldrop]

Yes, it included the cellulose, indeed, it was mostly the cellulose and the 
drywall, as we scrounged most of the wood for the new interior frame.  Just 
before this we tore down a garage building on our property, and salvaged a 
bunch of 2 x 4 lumber and 1 x 8 and 1 x 10 planks.  The building was built 
in 1929.

We did the cellulose ourselves.  We started with the "free blowing machine" 
offered by Home Despot if we bought a bunch of cellulose.  It was useless on 
the walls.  We wasted a half day wrestling with it (the lines kept 
clogging), and then decided to rent a larger and more powerful machine. 
That worked like a charm.  It was a 2 person operation, one guy outside 
running and feeding the machine, the 2nd inside with the hose in the wall. 
We also had a rube goldberg long string going from the inside to the outside 
work, so the outside operator would know when to turn off the machine (when 
one wall cavity was full, we would turn it off while moving to the next 
one).

Drilling the holes wasn't much trouble, either for the plaster and lathe or 
the drywall.

None of us had ever done this insulation work before (well, one was 
experienced in carpentry and drywall work).  I read up on it on the internet 
after googling "installing cellulose insulation".  iirc, the manufacturer's 
site had the best and most info.  the hardest thing was trying to figure out 
how much to buy.  Estimating the attic wasn't a problem, estimating the 
walls sucked, and we got it wrong, so we had to go back and buy more.  The 
2nd batch was $2/more/bale than the first batch.  not sure why that happened 
but it did.

We blew the cellulose into the wall cavities dry.  I think the wet cellulose 
process would have required removing the interior wall, and we did not want 
to remove that much lathe and plaster.

Installing the cellulose was messy, gloves, goggles, and a respirator (not 
none of those cheaper cloth face filters) are required.  When Sean would 
climb down out of the attic, he looked like a grey gnome, with bits of 
cellulose hanging in little strings from all over his body.  He did not 
appreciate it the first time he came down and I kind of laughed at the site 
and made some kind of a smart comment -- "looking kind of gnomish there Mr. 
Kay".  So don't do that, instead, praise whoever is getting up into the 
attic and bring them special treats lest you be drafted for said duty.  Me, 
I ran the machine outside consistently.  It was a big hopper with rotating 
spikes at the bottom.

Doing the walls was also messy in the house.  The drill was to fill the 
walls until the machine started to choke, which meant no more could get into 
the walls, then cut off the machine, remove the hose and its fitting from 
that hole in the wall, move to the next one, repeat as necessary.  Everytime 
the hose/fitting was removed from the wall (it has a metal fitting on the 
end that fits the hole in the wall), a little puff of cellulose would spray 
out and cover everything.  It's amazing the coverage of a small amount of 
cellulose suspended in the air, after it drifts down.  Which is why even 
doing the walls, the guy with the hose needs a respirator.  Me on the 
outside machine, not so much.  But you need a stick to push the clumps of 
cellulose onto the spikes.  I wouldn't use your hands, as those spikes could 
really chew threw a hand and arm without much trouble.  I grew up on a farm, 
and knew a lot of 9 fingered farmers who lost their ring finger to 
machinery.

It took us about 5 days of work to do our insulation project, 6 hour days, 
1548 sq ft house.

Bob Waldrop


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <bill.allen at verizon.net>
To: "Environmentally-preferable design, construction,building elements" 
<greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Ceiling Fans at Night?


> Bob,
> Does your cost include the cellulose?  Was it sprayed?  Did you do that 
> yourself?
> Looking for all the tips I can get....
> Thanks
> Bill
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Bob Waldrop" <bwaldrop at cox.net>
> Sender: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
> Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:24:29
> To: Environmentally-preferable design, construction, building 
> elements<greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Reply-to: "Environmentally-preferable design, construction, building 
> elements"
> <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Ceiling Fans at Night?
>
> I have nine inches in my walls and 14 in the attic.  To get 9 inches, we
> filled the existing walls (covered on the inside with plaster and lathe)
> with cellulose insulation, then built new interior walls inside of all of
> our exterior walls.  We then filled that new cavity with cellulose.  The
> total cost in 2005 was about $3,000, we did all of the labor (2 guys) 
> except
> for a couple of days of work for a single day laborer.
>
> Before we did this, nearly everyone we consulted here locally  said 
> "that's
> too much insulation", as though somehow that were a mortal sin, and it
> "would not be cost effective".
>
> But imho, cost effectiveness is in the eye of the beholder.  In  my case, 
> at
> age 53 when we did this project, I was thinking about retirement.  Through
> some charitable work I do, I see a lot of seniors living in very 
> challenging
> circumstances.  This was ahead of the financial crisis, but I have always
> been a bit pessimistic about future finances.  I am not making minimum 
> wage,
> but I am not making a middle class salary either, and I will go into
> retirement without the so-called "necessary $500K" that people says you
> "have to have" to retire comfortably.
>
> So my retirement plan is a house without a mortgage, that is very cheap to
> operate, and which has lots of edible landscaping.  I would rather spend
> money now, while I have income, that will reduce my expenses over time, 
> than
> go with conventional wisdom now and end up shivering in the future.
>
> To get past that conventional wisdom, we went through a public design
> process at runningonempty2 at yahoogroups.com, which has about 7,000 members
> and has been discussing peak oil and energy issues since 2001, which was 
> led
> by a guy from Colorado who designs and builds passive solar houses for a
> living.  So we started a thread to discuss retrofitting a 1929 Craftsman
> bungalow, and after going through all our info (present energy use, 
> existing
> wall and ceiling structure, etc) we came up with the present plan (which
> included replacing the south wall of our utility room with glass to add 
> some
> passive solar) and implemented it.  It was something that we could do,
> within our skill set, and it has worked very well for us.
>
> Bob Waldrop, Okie City
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Lynelle Hamilton" <lynelle at lahamilton.com>
> To: "Environmentally-preferable design, construction,building elements"
> <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 5:28 AM
> Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Ceiling Fans at Night?
>
>
>> How much wall insulation, Bob?
>>
>> Lynelle Hamilton
>>
>> On 05/01/2011 23:55, Bob Waldrop wrote:
>>> Well I third this motion.  I have always felt that massive class action
>>> lawsuits should be filed against architects and designers for 
>>> malpractice
>>> given the low levels of insulation so popular in these united States.
>>> One of the unexpected benefits of our insulation project, coupled with
>
>
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