How To Install Batt Insulation

hi I'm Shannon from host improvements comm and today I want to show you how do you install bat style insulation now this type of insulation can be used in any any framed wall we just happen to be in a basement today but that really won't matter the methods I show you here will basically pertain to any type of wall that you're going to do so we're obviously working on an exterior wall and like I said in a basement we've got this is a particular style of insulation it's fiberglass but there's stone type installations and other types that fall into this bat category that pretty much install very similar one thing with bad insulation that you want to remember is you don't want to pack it into place you don't want to compress it like that because as soon as you do this that spot is going to be a cold spot it loses its that's our value there this style of insulation actually relies on the air pockets inside the fibers to give you the actual r-value so so just remember when you're putting it in to be gentle don't just pack it in there some people are under the understanding you know the more I can get into that space the better I am and actually it's completely the opposite so so if you're using insular if your insulating a 2x4 wall you want an insulation that's made for that wall and the bags will typically say right on them what they're for so this is an R 12 and gives you the width here in inches and millimeters the length thickness so there's three and a half inches or 89 mils for a 2x4 wall and it also tells you how many pieces are in this bag and the approximate coverage and square feet that you can get out of it so okay so so this 15 inches would work in the 16 inch on center framing and if you're doing 24 inch on center framing it'd be 23 inches wide so that brings up one point I just want to touch on now that said it's 15 inches wide our spaces here are basically going to be 14 and a half inches in the cent in between because we're 16 inches Center to Center so you're looking for about a half an inch of extra width and length too cray enough friction to hold it in place so once you get it in there it's going to stay where you want it okay you don't want it loose to loose because it'll fall out or it'll have a gap where you're just going to have cold air that can travel right through so so those are just little things that you need to kind of be aware of you are going to have to cut it to fit most times it's to two pieces is too long to fill a typical 8-foot wall you'll need to cut a couple inches off or an inch off or whatever the case may be be in your situation so don't just pull them out of the bag and jam to in there because you're going to compress it somewhere if you do that so something else that I like to do now like I said we're in a basement here I've got rigid foam against the concrete walls but let's just pretend this is the back side of the exterior sheathing on your on your wall and anywhere else in your house behind your electrical receptacles and switches and all that kind of stuff there's going to be a slight void usually especially in a 2x6 wall but even in a in a 2x4 wall what I like to do instead of trying to get just a little bit of bad insulation behind them I'll attach a piece of rigid foam depending on what thickness will fit back there cut it just slightly bigger than the actual box here and then when I do my bad insulation I just cut out four around that and this will actually give you a little little better our value behind those boxes yeah I think that pretty much covers it you'll notice this you need this if you're on an exterior wall this is a vapor basically a vapor blocks around the electrical outlet so when you bring your vapor barrier in you'll seal to that and that creates your your air vapor barrier so so make sure if your exterior wall you have those on before you do all your insulating okay I think those are the main main things I need to touch on I'm going to cut this bag open and then we'll show you how to do the first piece I should mention that all you really need for this is uh well I'll cut this open first and I'll talk about that so just cut your bag open they're fairly compressed in there so once you open it up it's going to expand and get rather larger I'm just going to pull that out of the way I should mention that you only need a real basic amount of tools and supplies to do this really all you need is a utility knife to cut it you might want some form of a straight edge or even a framing square as far as safety thing safety things especially with the fiberglass you probably want some glasses just to keep any fibers that get in airborne out of your eyes they recommend right on the package wearing just like a cotton face respirator dust masks basically I'm not going to use that today with a little bit I'm doing it'll be easier to talk without that on but if you're doing any any amount you should have that on there some people also like to wear gloves if they're really you know having a bit of a reaction to the fiberglass this stuff here really isn't even that itchy but some some of them definitely are and especially older stuff is really itchy so those little fibers just get into everything but so that's the main things you need I don't think you really need anything else so if you do we'll come across odd as we get to it so okay so what I'm going to do is I'll just grab out my first bat we already know these two spaces here are our normal space so we don't need to cut the width down I like to start at the bottom and work my way up so the bottom of this piece is going to go right to the bottom plate of the wall and I'm just going to cut out for my electrical box and the styrofoam that I put in there so just take a quick measurement and remember we want it we don't want it to fit loose we want it to fit fairly snug so I'm going to go eleven and a half to 15 and a half that's going to be right here so I'm just going to make a little mark like that and about two and a half well something that actually I should mention here let me pull one of these out if you can kind of make that out you see do you see a 12 written on here right here okay that's just showing that this is an R 12 bat of insulation when you're installing them try to install the bats with that facing outward so that once it's all sealed and everything and they come to do your inspection before you cover it with drywall or whatever you're putting on they can see that and they know what you've used for an hour value some inspectors I've never personally seen it happen but some inspectors could get grouchy about it if they can't tell what it is and ask you to open the wall so if you turn that out or at least most of them I know I get going along and I kind of forget on the odd one but if you can at least get most of them out at least they visually can see what our value is of the material you used okay so I'm just going to cut this out okay so just simply get rid of that now the other thing we've got in this situation we not only have the box but we've got this horizontal wire here and even these loops blow in above the box to kind of work around so with this bad insulation if you just grab it approximately in the middle give a little bit of a pull it'll kind of split right in half like that so now we can take this and tuck this first half in behind everything that's there and then flop this this side down so I'm just going to get it in behind all this hopefully my body is not in the way too much for you to see okay so we just want to work it around make sure we're making contact down here on the bottom and on the sides as well most times I've usually got it too low and once I get it all in place I just give it a little tug at the top just to bring it up to where I want I just check around my box and my wires here make sure there's no gap showing it's all in there nice flop this down get it in behind all these these flops on this paper box you can see I'm not shoving it in there I'm not doing this with it right because that's we already talked about that not being good we just want to make sure it's tucked in and basically you know back from the surface of the wall you can see I've got a little bit of a dimple there it's actually not too bad but generally what I do I just give it a little bit of a pull up like that I don't want to pull it too far though where I create a gap down here okay so we got our first one in make sure it's nice around the boxes and that's our first one so now for the upper one just simply take a measurement so that's 42 so I'm going to cut this piece off at 42 and a half actually okay now this is where your some of you might want to use a framing square once you do a few of these you you kind of get an eyeball for what's street and what isn't okay so cutting it off about a half an inch longer than what we actually needed we've got the 12 facing out just tuck it up in there get it get it sitting in here if you can't see at the top you might want to stool or whatever too so you can go up and check that all out make sure you don't have any gaps make sure you got a nice joint here you can't see through back into the wall there okay so that's pretty easy right so again we just want to split the bat here we don't have a box to worry about we just have the wire let's bring it down flap flip this part down get all the little edges just tucked in there nice okay so just like that now we're going to have another one looks like we're at the same level and it really should be so I can just use that as a bit of a gauge you notice I've got my knife fully extended so you just need to be careful that you don't cut yourself with a razor knife and again we just finish off the space just like so you can see ox I've got a if you zoom right in you can see I've got a little bit of a space in there but we don't want that so we need to actually bottom one can be pulled up just a bit pull this one down just a bit double-check that those are all good I'll have a look up top I don't see any spaces there's a little spot there too it was just a fiber out of the okay so that's your standard spaces now when we get over here we've got a space that's a little bit narrower than this okay and we've got a space that's a lot narrower plus it has these bits of blocking and backing in there so we need to cut those those pieces down to to actual width okay so basically measure it something like this that's let's say over 12 inches wide or so that half-inch rule on the width and height and everything that works good when you get into these narrow ones half an inch tends to be a little bit too much so I usually go just a little less maybe a quarter inch and width on those if you get it a half inch wide on those narrow guys it kind of puckers and and doesn't just sit in there quite right so so we'll just just take a measurement here of what we need and it should be basically consistent so we just need to make a mark and cut our piece lengthwise I'm just putting a couple guidelines and this might be where you might want to use a straight edge or in my case I'm just using a four-foot level now you can see I'm compressing the bat down here to cut honestly I usually cut right on the floor on a piece of plywood it's not working as good on the foam here because I can't push that hard I just take it right down on the floor the floor is a little harder on the blade but so you can see that just cuts off nicely and again we've got a wire down there so we need to split our bat sometimes they won't split real great but 80 90 percent of the time they split quite nicely wherever you grab it so okay so just pull this down just like we did before you can see we're getting a nice fit on the sides it's not too tight it's not too loose pull it up just a hair okay I think you got the idea for that I'm going to skip this one for just you know it's just the same as what I did before cut it to width and fit it in we're going to go to this one though leave my tape measure over here okay we've got a few different obstacles obstacles in here so we've got about six and a quarter so I'm going to go six and a half inches wide on my piece here when you make that little mark with your knife you can see it well enough to get your straight edge or whatever you lined up where you want it okay so now like I said we've got a few few different things going on here we've got a wire there's going to eventually be a wall here so this wire is actually coming out and needs to come through that insulation so just get a bit of a rough idea where it needs to be we just need the height and it's in the middle we're just going to put a bit of a slit there so we can pass that wire through okay we also need to split the bat so that it comes around that we can put the we'll do it this way so this is going to go in here just push that through okay so in a normal situation if if you're just insulating a framed wall where there's plywood or OSB or whatever on the on the backside here right tight you're probably going to want to not your insulation around these blocks because those blocks are going to compress it too much at that point we've actually got well just about half an inch to an inch of space back here because of the concrete wall being out of plumb so it's not as much of a concern down here but I'll show you what I would normally do anyways first I got to get it in here let bring this up in here just to get us started okay we've got our piece our back piece here get it behind our wires right down to the bottom now because that block I've got to kind of go by feel where it needs to be right about there we've got our wire that we poked through there to the electrician now what I can do down here is easily just cut this with that block so it just sits up on the block right okay so we get rid of that here's our wire that'll come through our vapor barrier as well okay now with these blocks here if you just take your knife cut through in about half way or so kind of see here I've got that piece just peel out the thickness that you think you need doesn't need to be this full amount but you know this is inch and a half so I'd take out you know about an inch or so you can see how that just comes out and fits nicely around there and and the insulation at the backside isn't getting compressed now either and losing the r-value that you need okay so that's the basic basic scenario there on most of your insulation now the one thing that I don't have quite ready to show you is how to do an outside corner or an inside corner like we have over here what I'm going to do I'm just going to bring a little mock-up here and we'll just set that up and then we'll come back okay so in this corner and it's really hard to see I know the glare on the poly is probably kind of bad but we've got a stud here starting this wall we've got a stud right here that finishes that wall and it just happened the way the space has worked out we've got another stud really close here too so we've kind of got this type of situation right here so here's our two bottom plates here's our two ends studs on those walls here's our one that's kind of close and this is just a regular space over here so when you're doing this and what I did is basically I had this wall framed I'm insulating along I obviously cut a little strip to go in here right right back here not a big deal just like what I kind of was just showing you here now then before I got this stud in place what I did is I put my insulation back in this corner because if you don't put anything in there you're just going to have frost in the corners okay sorry I should have my mask on okay so I make sure there's a that's fully insulated all the way up now I can slide this stud over and toenail it in where I want it to be okay now I don't want that space there like what I just did by hand right this stud needs to be over there needs to be enough insulation in this corner that we're getting that little bit of compression we need just for the friction fit okay so nail that in you've got that all insulated and you just continue on just like we just did so I just I wanted to kind of show you on this little mock-up because it was just easier to show you than to try to just explain it and you try to figure it out on your own so so I think I think we pretty much touched on all the basics we do have some other types of insulation type videos spray foam that sort of thing that you can check out as well on different options but pretty much this would look after any type of bad insulation that you need so hopefully that was informative and it gave you all the answers you need it if it didn't you can always go to our form on our website at house - improvements comm go to the forum section post your questions up there and I can definitely answer it after that so you can also if you haven't got enough of us yet you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook keep in touch with us and you could also check out our patreon campaign that we've started as well so thanks a lot for watching and I hope this was helpful to fit into the openings let's just start over freaking sorry

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 254,530

Rating: 4.9236016 out of 5

Keywords: fiberglass, batt, insulation, install, installation, diy, home, house, improvement, improvements, reno, renovation, basement, heat, walls, concrete, finish, cut, measure, fibreglass, fiber, fibre, glass, roxul, pink, corning, warm, r value, drafty, draft, warmth, cool, cold, framing

Id: kJZsRM1nE78

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/mmoffitt15]

That is what she said...