The most important thing is to block drafts around the rim of the basement where the house sits on the basement. This should be well calked and now is a good time to do it with it exposed. Look for places where there are penetrations like out door water spigots, drier vents, telephone and television cable penetrations and plug around them well with calking. This is where you are most likely to experience drafts and of course cold air infiltration and heated air exfiltration.
The next most important heat saving is to get insulation snug into the area around the rim, what we call the rim joists. This includes the joist bays at the ends of the joists between them where they sit on the basement wall and along the side where the very edge joist sits on the wall. This is the thinnest part of the walls and therefore the most likely place where conduction will cool the inside and warm the outside. Rigid foam needs to be carefully shaped to fit these places snugly, often cutting fiber glass is a better solution as it will fit more forgivingly into these spaces. Sprayed foam is even better but requires commercial applicators and equipment to do it well and that gets expensive in that application. After that it comes down to insulating the entire block wall. If the floors feel cool you might like to apply fiber glass bats to the under side of the floor all along the basement walls as this is likely to be the coolest area. There is nothing wrong with insulating under the entire floor even if you will eventually finish the basement, it offers additional sound insulation. Do you heat your basement? If not then insulating under the floor will certainly improve comfort in the house and reduce heating costs and fiber glass insulation isn't all that expensive, it is not pleasant to handle but it can be well fitted. Hope this is helpful. ----- Original Message ----- From: Claudia To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 6:57 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Insulated Basement? Hi All, Would it be safe to say that, if the basement is not insulated, the main floor of the house will become more drafty? We had all that work done to our basement, but we have not yet insulated it; there is no dry wall & no insulation! It's just brick walls & concrete flors now! Claudia MSN: [email protected] Skype: claudiadr2009 Join either of my groups; the first is for visually-impaired women, while the other is for people wishing to discuss homemaking issues. [email protected] [email protected] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
