[Greenbuilding] Which insulation? How to install?

[RT]

On Mon, 28 May 2012 13:59:35 -0400, el Stronzo di Nord wrote:

> On Sun, 27 May 2012 15:05:21 -0400, Eli Talking  
> <elitalking at rockbridge.net> wrote:
>
>> I was planning on the addition being built over grade slab,but one day  
>> my contractor client got so enthusiastic with
>> her excavator that she assumed a crawlspace and excavated accordingly.   
>> It will be a crawlspace.
>
> Rather than futz with all of the challenges/headaches associated with a  
> wood-frame floor, I'd tend to stick with the original plan to utilise a  
> slab as floor, but elevating it to the top of the stem wall foundation  
> now that a hole has been dug.
>
> It could be a suspended slab if it is desired to utilise the volume  
> beneath.

An addendum to the above would be:

If there is sufficient height beneath the suspended slab and if the slab  
is an ordinary cast-in-place-on-top -of-re-usable/removable-forms type,  
with maybe a concrete beam to shorten the span of the slab...

An idea worth reviving IMO is the "rainwater cistern in the basement" that  
was common in many (most ?) of the farmhouses built in the 19th and  
early-to-mid 20th C in my old neighbourhood of Oxford/Brant/Waterloo  
counties in SW Ontario.

That cistern was the potable water supply for the house to help relieve  
some of the load on the groundwater well or in some cases, it was simply a  
more palatable alternative to high iron/sulphur content well water.

In some more modern homes where there might be an attached garage, the  
cistern would be in the foundation volume beneath the garage floor slab.  
In some cases when the cistern was abandoned, a doorway would be punched  
through the foundation wall separating the basement and the ex-cistern and  
the cistern would be turned into a root cellar.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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