How to Insulate a 2 x 4 wall.

hey everybody welcome back to the channel we're in the garage today and we're going to be doing some upgrades uh this garage is going to be used for a shop for a number of things so it's it's time to make it look like a shop so i'm just going to show you what the builder did and kind of what's standard in an attached garage if you notice the builder insulated the two inside walls and the ceiling again insulated and drywalled a vapor barrier but they left this one outside wall 2x4 frame wall uninsulated it was an option for an upgrade but most houses uh have this one wall left exposed so in order to seal this up and brighten it up actually we're going to show you how to install a bat insulation r12 into these two by four walls and this is really applicable for uh basement framing house framing garage framing what i'm going to show you today is is applicable to all those three and not only two by four walls but uh two by six walls as well we really got a decent space here with two out of the four walls already insulated and drywalled we got an insulated overhead door so adding this and adding the vapor barrier and eventually the drywall is going to really clean up the space so one of the other reasons we're doing this as well guys is this is a garage definitely in the winter months and what i've been noticing is you park a couple vehicles in here and with heavily insulated walls and ceiling already in place the heat from uh the engines of the vehicles doesn't dissipate quickly so what happens is on the on the other side of this 2x4 wall you have you know below zero temperatures inside the garage it's above zero you got the heat from the engines that doesn't go anywhere quickly and it ends up building up frost and ice on this 2x4 wall so eventually what's going to happen is is the osb is going to end up either molding or swelling from the moisture you just i mean it it is temporarily water resistant but as this material ages it could definitely swell and rot and then you're gonna you're gonna have a big problem that's one of the main reasons why we're doing this as well is to prevent that ice buildup in in the winter season so having the entire garage insulated it becomes a non-issue and really uh since this is gonna be used as as more of a shop it's a nice upgrade to the product we're gonna be installing today uh owens corning fiberglass bat insulation this stuff is known as pink r12 that is the insulation value we're gonna get out of this material it's three and a half inches thick and uh take a look at the specs here quick this is 15 inch wide material and it's designed for three and a half inch thick framing which is what we have uh you get just under 100 square feet per bundle so you get quite a bit here and uh yeah it's fairly economical too as always guys let's go through the tools we're going to use today not a lot involved in an installation like this tape measure of course uh utility knife one of the snap blade knives they call it this one is is an h1 olfa it's a one inch blade a really nice solid knife you need some straight edges for the cutting that you have to do so there's a couple options i i like to use a level this particular level is four feet long so it reaches from end to end on the bat in case you got to make lengthwise cuts you can also use a t-square for drywall which works pretty well too but you know honestly i prefer using uh just a carpenter's level it's a thicker edge to cut against and it's a little uh a little safer when you're doing your cuts last thing i'll point out here guys is it's it's nice to have a cutting surface so today we're going to be using a just a piece of uh three quarter inch plywood i just had it laying around from another renault uh yeah we can take these bats we can cut them on concrete but it's gonna really dull the knife blade so it helps to have a surface to cut on so whether that's cutting on a you know a two by six or a chunk of plywood whatever you got to extend the the life of your knife blade works uh best i just want to explain a couple details before we uh get going here um so as mentioned we're doing a 2x4 wall so uh our cavity and the framing here you can have a look is three and a half inches thick and so is the insulation bat so it's designed to fit into this type of cavity one other thing i'll show you here is these studs are framed at 16 inches on center so how do you find what your centers are you take your tape and you put it in the center of each stud and you see the red mark on the tape is right at 16 so these are what's called 16 inch centers so a 16 inch on center framed wall basically leaves you with a cavity of 14 and a half inches see that there and the insulation bats as we talked about before they're cut at 15 inches so what you what you end up getting is a nice snug fit you don't have to jam it in there or bunch it up to fit it it's actually designed to fit perfectly in these these wall cavities now of course depending on how your wall's framed you're you're not going to have full on 14 and a half inch pockets all the way along the wall you can see there we have one that's around 10 or 11 inches over there we got smaller stuff here where the framing runs up to the second floor so we got a like a four inch chunk another eight inch piece uh of course your king studs underneath the window it cripples and then you get over to some more standard framing and then into the corner again it tightens up so you are going to have to cut some pieces to fit we're going to show you how straightforward that is just one last note guys uh you don't want to you don't want to crush this material to get it into your space if it if it feels like it's fitting a little tight grab your utility knife and your straight edge and trim the piece down so that it's just a snug fit not a fit where you have to bunch it up and jam it into the cavity because all you're going to do in that case is just reduce the r value the insulation is designed to fit snug but not crushed up and balled up uh in the cavity so just a quick note there so we're going to start by opening up our first bundle here i'll try and show you a fairly straightforward way to do this instead of just ripping it open and having this is under a this is under a bit of pressure so you want to be somewhat careful when you're opening this so i typically start at one end and just cut the plastic down trying not to cut through the first bat that's in there so basically just scoring it and as you're going to open this up it's going to expand so i get it open in the middle like that and then what i would do is i would cut open each end same process and just let the baths start to slowly expand just like so and then it's not all over the place so as we get going here there's a couple things i like to do i'm going to take the shop back and just clean up some of these cavities usually when you open them up you'll find a bunch of debris left over by the builder so we're gonna get rid of that stuff just so that we have nice clean wall cavities these aren't too bad but i mean there's some drywall dust and leftover stuff that we're gonna get rid of and the other thing that i like to do is go around and find all the studs that are 16 inches on center like we mentioned and and sort of start with all the full pieces first and then once you get all that done you're left with the the pieces that you got to cut and then you can uh you know start measuring in cutting material but i like to start by throwing all the full pieces in first now they call this stuff ecotouch that just means it's formaldehyde in the process of making it so i will recommend that you throw some gloves on this stuff can the little bits of fiberglass can get into your skin it can be very itchy and i'm also going to recommend throwing on a little m95 mask just to keep from breathing in as you're cutting and the particles of this stuff are floating around as you're handling it putting in the walls so uh i'm going to recommend throwing on a little bit of a little bit of ppe here just to uh just to keep your skin protected and save your lungs as i mentioned before guys we're gonna do a quick cleanup here uh we'll speed this along just to make sure the plates are all cleaned off here before filling up the cavities with the [Music] insulation [Music] all right [Music] uh one thing i forgot to add uh nice thing about this garage is it has near 11 foot high uh ceilings so it's a nice feature but a little uh two foot step ladder i was using uh isn't gonna cut it so we upgraded to uh a six footer so we can reach these uh these top sheets here uh that's gonna make it a lot easier so yeah if you're if you're working on a tall ceiling you're definitely going to need a couple different heights of ladders so in this case we're using a a two footer and we're using a six foot step ladder [Music] so we got all of our full pieces in uh standard bats i just want to point out a couple things before we start making our cuts what do you do when you run into an outlet mount on the wall uh you can see this element has a plastic boot on it so it's ready for vapor barrier and it meets the building code but you've got a bit of a gap behind here you got probably an inch and a half if you switch this boot so here's what you need to do this bat material splits in half really nicely so your outlet box is two inches by three inches so take your straight edge and cut a piece of bat off just like that and then cut it down so you end up with roughly it doesn't have to be exact roughly a two inch by three inch piece just like so and then push this insulation behind your box area so that way when you cut your notch out for your full piece you've got insulation behind your box so we're going to do that on both of our outlets what we're dealing with here and that's going to provide a little bit of r value for for you there and it won't be a cold spot so we're at the point where we're gonna start making our cuts and uh here's here's what you do here's what i like to do take the tape measure your wall cavity i get five and three quarter and i'm going to add a half an inch just like they do on the regular size bath so i'm going to go six and a quarter on this particular piece and you're going to repeat this in all your your cut areas so this one measures six inches i'm gonna go six and a half this uh cavity here measures eleven and a half i'm going to cut it at 12 inches so you're going to be left with a snug fit which is what you want and that's basically how you do your cuts okay so i got my mask off so you guys can hear me you want to be fairly precise with this but it doesn't have to be perfect but here on the side of caution i'm trying to cut six and a quarter i'm measuring out around roughly six and a half so take your straight edge press down into the bat grab your utility knife and just straight pull and that's how this material cuts and then you're left with your with your cut piece so uh another quick thing i'll show you here a quick tip uh the beauty of these snaply knives as you snap off segments and you're left with a sharp blade every time so if you start feeling your blade dragging through the insulation like i did there i've made a few cuts with this knife already take your pliers put it on the edge of the blade up to the line that you see and just push away from you and you snap your blade off you end up with a fresh blade it's going to cut like butter so uh here's another tip once you make your cuts uh measure what you have left in this case i got a piece that's nine and a quarter inches left i'm gonna check my other wall cavities just to see if anything measures roughly out to that dimension i've got one over here that's uh just shy of nine inches so i'm going to take this piece before i cut it down any smaller and i'm going to put it right into this cavity and we're minimizing our waste so last thing i'm going to show you on cutting insulation is how do you deal with one of these uh outlet boxes one of these gang boxes so you got to take some measurements if you have your tape you know the gang box roughly two inches wide so the measurement you want is the bottom of the of the box i get 34 and a half and the top of the box i get 39. so what you're going to do take your tape over to a clean bat orient yourself as to where your box is in the back which is going to be roughly around here so i'm going to take my tape i'm going to lock it out again it doesn't have to it's not doesn't have to be super precise but i'm going to score at 34 and a half i'm going to score again at 39 with my knight then i'm gonna go in at roughly two and a quarter and i'm going to score that mark too so then once you have your your marks all made you can cut them out a little firmer tear that piece away and you're left with a bat that's going to go around your outlet box we'll pop that in quick so we've got our small piece i showed you before that's behind the box and we've got our cut batting around the box that's basically how you tackle outlets it doesn't matter if it's in the basement in the garage wherever it is in the house framing itself that's that's how you do it the boot is going to prevent any cold drafts from coming in this box opening here so yeah once you get your vapor barrier on i'll show you that in another video but once you get your vapor barrier on and you take this with your tuck tape you're gonna end up with a sealed outlet box all right guys now that i've uh showed you a couple pro tips on how to cut and how to deal with outlet boxes and just double checking your cuts to make sure you don't have a ton of waste i'm going to get back to cutting the rest of the pieces for this wall we're going to speed things up for you because it's kind of repetitive but again measure add your half inch to your cavities cut your cut your bats gently push them in so we're going to get this wall finished up and we'll wrap this up for you [Music] hey [Music] foreign [Music] hey [Music] [Music] uh [Music] all right guys that pretty much wraps it up we've got all our cuts made all our pieces put in everything is nice and snug nothing is stuffed into the wall everything is i guess you want to call it fluffy um one thing i will mention i came across what happens if you find a wall cavity that's wider than the 15 inch piece so what you do you got to put your pieces in together but in this case this happened to be i think a 19 and a half inch wide cavity so you uh marry two pieces together they basically sort of friction fit and uh hold each other together you can see top and bottom here in the next video once we get to the vapor barrier we get the poly on the wall uh you'll see how uh how the poly holds everything in if it was loose this is fitting really really snug but if it was loose you could strap it with some real thin material just to hold it in place until you get your vapor barrier up and and staple that in and that's not going to go anywhere so there it is guys all right guys that's going to wrap it up for this one thanks for uh again for watching um don't forget to uh like and subscribe if you uh for more diy content and uh last pro tip it doesn't hurt to wear long sleeves the fiberglass material even though it's a little safer these days once the little bits get into your skin it can be irritating for a couple days afterwards so even if the weather's warm you know what throw on some long sleeves or a work jacket or something like that protect yourself um again thanks again for watching we'll catch you guys

Channel: J of All Trades

Views: 244

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Insulation, diy, 2x4 wall, garage, shop, how to

Id: KHefF1rcEcw

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021