How To Insulate A Window Or Door

hi Shannon here from host improvements comm I'm going to explain to you in this video here how to two different methods on how to insulate around a window so that's actually insulating the gap that's left between the framework and the window frame itself there's basically two methods one method involves a bad insulation that you they call it chinking so you'll actually slide this into place in that space the other method and the one that I prefer to use is a spray foam now you have to be sure you're using a low expanding spray foam made for around windows and doors you don't want one that says filling gaps or anything like that or high pressure you're just going to have a mess because it'll actually Bend your window jambs and door jams out of shape so you want the low expansion foam one that's made for windows and doors so we're going to start with that one to begin with so we've got a window here and we've got two two by six framing so the spray foam comes with a straw and everything shake the can really well before you start to use it I like to do my spray foam in two passes so that being said what I mean is I want to stick the straw into the back into the gap about an inch from the outside edge of the window the back the far far side of the window spray that opening about half full let it sit for a couple hours or you don't even have to do that half an hour say you know go and do every window half full and come back and spray again to fill that window up what that does is that then when the foam you know you're going to get something that comes outside of the opening that you need to trim off with your knife as soon as you trim it it cuts off the outer layer that actually creates an air barrier so by doing it in two passes the inner one still creates an air barrier for you know three-quarters of the thickness of the window and you know this last one is giving our value but not necessarily air barrier so I like to do it in two passes we're going to do this one here I'll just show you how to how to go about it I've got another one that I've already done one pass on so then we'll switch over to that window and just show you the final so again I usually start in a in the bottom corner and work my way up and I want to stick the straw right back in there just vote as far as I can like set about an inch or two inches from the from the far outside edge of the wall and start filling okay and you'd continue all the way up to the top come back down to the bottom work around any blocks or shims you have in the way just like so and you'd continue on doing that all the way around the window and like I said you're wanting to fill that maybe half full or three-quarters full now it will expand out a little bit so usually if you stop at about half full it'll expand enough to about three quarters and you should be good so we're just going to quickly reset the camera a couple windows over at one that I already did with the first pass so we can show you the second pass okay so we've moved over to a different window and this one like I said I already sprayed the first pass in and I don't know if you can really see it on the camera you can see some of the foam down in there so now what I want to do again is just insert the straw and do another another bit of a pass here and up the side as well and like said that you would continue yourself all the way around there once once that has a chance most of these will cure within a couple hours and you'll find that it expands out past the window just go back and trim it off with your utility knife once it's fully cured if you get some of this on your hands or your clothes or hopefully not the flooring but if you get some on there I know it's hard not to but don't try to wipe it up when it's still wet let it cure and then get rid of it if you get it on your hands obviously you're going to want to clean it up right away but it's a lot easier to clean off a flooring or the wall or anything if it's actually had a chance to cure otherwise you just smeared make more of a mess so so that's spray foaming to insulate a window now we're going to move back to another window that we don't have any insulation in and we're going to actually use strips a bad insulation I'll show you how to do that okay okay so now the second method which really I don't really recommend I usually use the spray foam method myself but the second method is using a fiber bad insulation to insulate the space around the windows or doors so what you want to do is whatever your width of your space is here between the window jamb and the framing you want to rip off a piece of insulation about twice that thickness so we've got about a half inch or three 3/4 inch gap here I've got about an inch of thickness then I've cut it into width where we've got a 2x6 wall so I've cut this at about five five and a half inches and what you really need is that insulation and some kind of flat utensil in order to us help slide it and guide it back in there I like to use a flat red bar I use a red bar for a lot of things you'll notice in my videos you could use a butter knife ruler whatever whatever fits back in that opening so what you want to do well first of all what you don't want to do is just start I've seen lots of people just Ram in as much stuff as they can in there and think well I've got it full now I can't get anything else in it's good that's the worst thing you can do because this type insulation once you get it too compressed you actually have lost your insulating value in it so what we're trying to do is actually take this piece that's why we've taken the time to make it the right size and and slide it straight back in there as much as we can now it does take a bit of fiddling to get it in there but that's why we've got the red bar so basically start by just getting it folded on the red bar a little bit and starting it in there and once you once you have it in there unless you've got a really tight spot you can almost pinch it and just slide it right back and you can kind of tell if you're getting it all balled up or not once you start doing fuel them kind of work it from the back side the front side whichever we seems to work the best get it all in there nice and and you can see it's well I don't know if you can see but I'll do the bottom to show you better but it's just all nicely fit in there and does a does a real nice job so same thing on the bottom we're just going to start it in there we've got a shim on the one side here to work around so we're starting at that shim I'm trying not to bunch it up I'm just working it along there until I can tell that I've got it right back to the edge and it looks good it's not just all rammed in there and hanging out and snagged up so like I said I don't really like to use this method if I don't have to about the only time I do is if I've got a really large gap and a renovation or something you know we've changed the size of the window because the cost of the spray foam it's usually not that effective if you know we've got a two-inch gap to fill it takes a lot of foam what I have done is youth use the bad insulation to fill three-quarters of that gap and then I'll maybe spray spray foam to the inside because it creates that air seal and kind of finishes it off so it's kind of a hybrid between the two but for most times when you got a half inch or 3/4 of an inch or whatever or less I'll use the spray foam for sure yeah so that's that's about all there is to either one of those methods should be good okay so thanks for watching another one of the my videos we have lots online to view we have videos on installing these actual windows in new construction we've got installing renovation type windows all kinds of different things so check out our equal YouTube channel there's 30 or 40 or I don't even know how many videos are on there now we've also got the website at house improvements comm we've got the forum on the website where you can come and ask any questions or make any comments you want so yeah just come and check it out and let us know what you think

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 432,472

Rating: 4.9026165 out of 5

Keywords: insulate, window, door, frame, gap, space, fiberglass, fibreglass, batt, spray, foam, expanding, low, trim, new, replace, renovate, wall, cavity, insulation, r-value, vapor, barrier, sealing, energy, efficient, efficiency

Id: 0T_vP2l8LOU

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 24 2012