Quick and dirty insulation
October 31, 2014 12:51 PM   Subscribe

My mom is in the Boston area, has an uninsulated exterior wall that is under a roof and needs to put something up. Can she just nail up the insulation or should this be handled differently.

One of the rooms in the house was gutted, with plywood tacked up to cover where the external doors were and the insulation on the walls removed. There is no second floor over this part of the house. The kitchen used to open onto to this space, there is now a piece of plasterboard where the door used to be. (My mom is on her third contractor, this mess was made by her first one.) She needs to put up insulation this weekend and has a the non-fiberglass version of the roll up stuff, with an metallic paperish coating on one side.

Given that the space this would be put up in is completely protected from the elements, can she simply tack this stuff up around the outside of the plasterboard and surrounding area to insulate it, or is more work needed? If she can tack it up, how effective will it be? And finally, which side faces outward?

If this stuff should only be used on the inside even with the protection from the elements, how should she put it up, what health risks does she face, etc.?

This all will be torn off come spring when this contractor (hopefully) actually finishes the room. So it doesn't have to look at all nice, just function.
posted by Hactar to Home & Garden (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
If I'm understanding you right, the plan is to have the insulation outside of the room, with nothing else over it. I.e the layers are OUTSIDE | insulation | sheetrock | INSIDE.

I think there are two issues: (1) keeping the air still in the insulation, and (2) keeping the insulation absolutely dry. If those can be accomplished it should help keep warmth inside reasonably well, but of course not ideal.

If the insulation could be covered with a big polythene sheet (OUTSIDE | polysheet | insulation | sheetrock | INSIDE) that could deal with both issues; I'd tape over the joins between rolls too, and put the metallic side against the sheetrock. The poly would act as a vapor barrier similar to tyvek between the siding and the sheathing in "normal" construction.

I don't know the health risks of non-fiberglass insulation. If it's outside the room and shut behind poly then I wouldn't worry personally, ymmv.
posted by anadem at 1:26 PM on October 31, 2014


If the insulation is faced (that "metallic paperish coating on one side"), that facing goes on the inside. The reason is that if you put it on the outside, it's cold, and the warm air will have moisture in it and condense on it. If you put it on the inside, it's the temperature of the inside air and thus less likely to get condensation.
posted by straw at 1:43 PM on October 31, 2014


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