The dude is spraying polyurethane spray foam in between the 2 x 6 wood framing we had built over the exterior walls of half our basement. (The other half was insulated by the previous owners of our home.)

This room – where our eldest son sleeps, or will once we finish drywalling and painting and putting in new carpet – is soooo much warmer now, it is quite something!

“I’ve never seen anything like this”, says Jay Sigurdson, above, one of the The “A” Team – aka the Spray Team – who is squatting in my living room with his insulation spray gun. (Oh, I’ve heard that before about this drafty old house built like Frankenstein from spare parts over the decades.)

The worker from Jerry’s Insulating is referring to the space under our front bay window (shown above) – about 10 feet long and a couple of feet deep – that he’s discovered is completely empty and is taking in tons of the “pour foam. “Just wait until you feel how much warmer you’ll be in here,” he adds. (Music to my ears.)

I hear the hiss of their spray guns as they pour the Icynene foam (only used for plaster walls) into the toonie-sized holes they drilled in the exterior walls of he living room (2 walls); kitchen (1 wall, including drilling through back of cabinets); bathroom (1 wall); kids’ bedrooms (2 walls each).

Speedy Gonzalas with Guns

“This job would have taken us at least a couple of days when the company started” almost a decade ago, says John Allan, the second insulator. Instead, today it’s taken only 3 hours total – and that’s for the main floor AND basement insulation work!

Some more photos here:

The truck that took up our whole driveway…

… And inside the truck – a nest of hoses and pumps and more insulation wizardy:

Next blog post: What Went Down… Downstairs. Insulating another level of our home, using different insulation material and a different method.

Yes, it’s true… we have actually BOOKED a job for the eco-renovations; let the games begin!

On Dec. 17th a crew from Jerry’s Insulating Co. comes over to:

• Inject Icynene Pour Foam (only used for plaster walls) into all four exterior walls of our main floor – from the inside, by drilling small holes in the walls

• Spraying polyurethane foam onto the exterior walls for the half of our basement that is unfinished [we have to first to build a 2 x 6 wood frame over the cinder block walls]

Total Quote: $5,240 (plus GST)

And … drum roll please…  We will get about $4,000 of this cost back from the fed & provincial governments combined. This federal grant table, below, shows the value we get for each area, and then double that to get what Ontario will pay, too.

Our entire home will be warm and toasty, at last – guests who come for Christmas this year won’t have to bring their slippers and extra sweaters as they always have. And we will save mucho in energy bills this winter …. All for the discounted price of $2,000 of our own money. Ca-chink.

Update on Earlier Post about Attic Insulation

Turns out we do NOT need any insulation done at all in the attic or the knee walls of our 1.5-storey floor!

We ripped up three areas up there, our home energy auditor swung by our place today to pop his head into the new holes to check, and: Clean Bill of Health on the upstairs floor. Yesss! Score one for the previous owners.

“No, we don’t do framing, nor batten-type insulation. No, we don’t knock through your knee walls, but we will create an attic hatch for you….”

That is just a sample of the different, sometimes conflicting information I’ve gleaned after visits from 3 insulation contractors in a 24-hour period. I took notes, and was guided by my husband’s (written) directions.

One insulator, from EnerLiv, went to his car for 20 minutes after his review of our insulation needs on all 3 levels of our home, and came back with an itemized quote on the spot. The other 2 contractors said they will phone in their quotes.

Our home energy audit report is already getting dog-eared after the number of times we flip through it to get “government-sanctioned” advice. And we are just starting to dip into the 130-page Keeping the Heat In book we got for free from our auditor, that’s published by Natural Resources Canada.

(Interesting, an energy consultant we meet last week at a Burlington mall giving demos to the public said she was shocked to discover how many local residents did NOT receive this apparently valuable book from their auditor… So we were lucky. If you weren’t so lucky, you can order the Keeping the Heat In book at 1-800-387-2000.)

Meanwhile, I just read a blog post warning of Typar vapour barrier woes when used for inside basement walls (an area we need to get insulated).  Yikes! We’re really going to need to be consumer-researchers extraordinaire!

Stay tuned for more on the insulators’ quotes.

“For the insulation guy we need a separate quote for each floor of the house
Upstairs
* Insulate the attic and side walls
* Install an attic hatch
* Fix and install attic ventilation as required

Main Floor
* Can any insulation be added to the walls on this floor?
* He will probably need to drill a hole in an outside wall to evaluate this. If he does please put the hole in an inconspicuous place (i.e. in the hall closet or in side one of the kitchen cabinets

Basement: There is no insulation from the furnace area, through the laundry room and around Hayden’s room.  Depending on the labour costs we might do this ourselves but you know how good we are at doing these sorts of projects.  Therefore please ask him for a quote and what kind of insulation he recommends for this
* As part of the quote we will need to frame in the parts that are not framed now so please ask him to include this in his quote
* Also as per the EcoEnergy Audit a big loss of heat comes from the headers – please ask him about this and ensure that they will be including this in their work

Wow, that’s the longest thing my husband has written to me in years! Doug wasn’t able to get the time off work to walk through with the insulators himself – as he did with the home auditor.

And to think, without his direction, I am was just going to tell the insulators:  “It’s cold in here… knock yourself out.”

Well, after 3 hours with 3 contractors, I’ve learned…

• You only “blow” insulation in when you’re doing an attic; otherwise you’re “spraying” or ‘battening”
• You cannot insulate a double-brick home without reconstruction of the walls, as there isn’t enough space between outside and inside worlds
• We have knee walls that, strangely, rise up past my shoulder
• We have enough room behind those knee walls to house a full children’s nursery or store large pieces of furniture, bikes, etc.

Stay tuned for a breakdown of the 3 contractors’ quotes as to insulating the 3 levels of our old, drafty house.

That’s because attics are often poorly ventilated and insufficiently insulated, and the attic hatch is not properly sealed.

Hold up… “attic hatch”?! We’re not even sure we have an attic, but we know we don’t have a hatch up there!

My beloved, Doug, is all excited about attics since he contacted insulators EnerLiv this week. Apparently their services include the installation of an attic hatch – to allow future access to the attic (should they find one in our home).

You see, we have 1.5-storey house, wherein the top .5 holds 2 bedrooms (nothing else) with sloping side walls. When we got new shingles a few years back, one of the roofing nails went through the bedroom wall. That’s how little space – if any – there is between our roof and bedroom walls upstairs.

So I can’t wait to see where this “attic” of ours is located. The insulation consultants come in a couple of weeks to our home; stand by for an update!

Basement Insulation: Increase the insulation value of the basement walls by a minimum of RSI 4.2 (R-24)
Federal incentive: $850
EnerGuide Rating Improvement: 6.9 points

Wall Insulation: Increase exterior wall insulation by an amount greater than RSI 1.59 (R-9)
Federal incentive: $1,074
EnerGuide Rating Improvement: 3 points

While we are going to hire contractors for some of the insulation work, we are going to try to do as much of it ourselves as we can. [Heather writes: ha! Doug says that now...]

This photo shows our laundry room in our basement, which – like a full half of our basement – is not insulated at all.

We are going to frame and insulate the laundry room, recycle the old freezer  down there, and turn it into a workshop so we can do the work we need.

Because our kitchen is directly above the laundry room, that will also help to warm the floor in the most used room in the house. (And the kitchen floor is like a hockey rink in the winter!)

The door on the far wall of the laundry room is to our cold cellar. We never use it, but apparently it’s letting a lot of heat out right now because it is not properly sealed or insulated.

So, insulation contractors here we come; Doug is armed with names he got WOM from coworkers and a few from Google searches.

Recapping: Why are we starting our eco renovations with the decided unsexy task of insulation – when there are obviously more visibly gratifying renos we’d like to do?

Because it will garner us a total of $ 1,924 in federal rebates (and matching amount from Ontario government), as well as 9.9 EnerGuide points (towards our goal of reaching 82, from our current 61). Good to keep our eye on the prize!

Over-insulated Manor

Meanwhile, another couple in Britain is trying to sell the ‘over insulated’ house they built themselves from scratch. The property costs £3,029.20 a year in Council tax, but gas and heating bills cost just £270 a year because the property is so well insulated.

Malcolm and Maxine Cox didn’t find that solar panels and wind turbines produced much energy for them – so decided to focus on energy conservation instead for the £ 3.2 million mansion. They layered all the floors and ceilings with high-density insulation.

So, those GreenHomeDiary bloggers felt bored 4 days into an insulation installation… Just imagine how they’d feel in the shoes of the Coxes, whose insulation covered a 3-storey house including 6 bedrooms, a 33ft by 21ft entrance hall, 3 reception rooms and a paddock for horses!!