JohnMartin
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2006
- Location
- Cumberland, Maine
One of my sons recently purchased his first home, a Lincoln Logs kit cabin built in about 2005. It was built by the owner’s son, and a lot of what I’ve seen is pretty questionable. Interior is cathedral ceiling, mostly T&G V match pine boards. Rafters are 2x12, on 24” centers. Roof is asphalt shingles, with ridge vent.
Here’s the insulation situation. The only place I can see the roof insulation is in the crawl spaces behind the knee walls in the loft. Rather than use 23” insulation - which would have been correct for the 24” on center joists - they instead used the 15” batts (R38, faced) designed for 16” on center joists, with a cut 8” piece alongside. There was no attempt to tape or otherwise join the pieces. There is one batt from about the top of the crawl space down to about two feet from the floor, and another 4’ piece from there down - which means that about 2’ of it is stuffed into the soffit. No vents or baffles are present. They did, for some reason, staple cardboard to the underside of the roof sheathing. Squirrels have gotten in and made a terrible mess of things, and the insulation has been pulled down in many places. Our plan is to pull out the ripped insulation that we can get to in the crawl space and replace it with the correct 23” faced R38 batts. Roof insulation that we cannot get to from the crawl space will stay as is.
Here are my questions:
1. How far - if at all - should the new batts be stuffed down into the soffits? The soffits are properly vented at the bottom.
2. Should we be using baffles or vent panels under the new insulation? Given that there are no vents the rest of the way up from the top of the crawl spaces to the ridge vent, I can’t see that they would do much good. Perhaps one of the J-shaped baffle vents part way down into the soffit?
I realize that proper installation would have had rafter vents going all the way to the ridge, but that area is inaccessible now.
Thanks,
John
Here’s the insulation situation. The only place I can see the roof insulation is in the crawl spaces behind the knee walls in the loft. Rather than use 23” insulation - which would have been correct for the 24” on center joists - they instead used the 15” batts (R38, faced) designed for 16” on center joists, with a cut 8” piece alongside. There was no attempt to tape or otherwise join the pieces. There is one batt from about the top of the crawl space down to about two feet from the floor, and another 4’ piece from there down - which means that about 2’ of it is stuffed into the soffit. No vents or baffles are present. They did, for some reason, staple cardboard to the underside of the roof sheathing. Squirrels have gotten in and made a terrible mess of things, and the insulation has been pulled down in many places. Our plan is to pull out the ripped insulation that we can get to in the crawl space and replace it with the correct 23” faced R38 batts. Roof insulation that we cannot get to from the crawl space will stay as is.
Here are my questions:
1. How far - if at all - should the new batts be stuffed down into the soffits? The soffits are properly vented at the bottom.
2. Should we be using baffles or vent panels under the new insulation? Given that there are no vents the rest of the way up from the top of the crawl spaces to the ridge vent, I can’t see that they would do much good. Perhaps one of the J-shaped baffle vents part way down into the soffit?
I realize that proper installation would have had rafter vents going all the way to the ridge, but that area is inaccessible now.
Thanks,
John