How To Insulate Joist Ends Using Rigid Foam

hi I'm Shannon from host improvements calm today's video is going to deal with insulating the rim joist area your home in this we've got a couple different ways of doing this but this one video that we're going to do today is going to deal with using bad insulation a combination of bad insulation and two inch rigid foam and can spray foam so we picked purposely kind of picked one real difficult spot and one that's going to be super easy just to show you what all is involved in this particular house and I don't even know if you can see the joists are in filled with concrete not every home is going to have that so you might actually have another 8 or so inches of space back there so what I would do typically is use some bad insulation to initially fill the bulk of that space back there and leave the last two or three inches over the over the basement wall for the rigid foam okay so in this case we've got a duct we're going to deal with this one first we've got a duct kind of in the way so I actually can't even use all of this fat so I'm just going to rip it in half for this one spot so I'm just going to get this up in there first I've had it pre-cut to to size the trick is getting it up in behind that the HVAC boot here just like that and down there okay so that's that's easy enough now the pieces of foam that I've got i pre-cut them or pre-work them a little bit hopefully I don't have to do too much adjusting on them because of this scenario it's really tricky we've got to do it in pieces to make it work so I've kind of pre-cut some some pieces here to work around this boot so I'm just going to slide them into place and this you just kind of make up on the go as as you need it sort of thing you know depending on your situation your boot might be out further if you didn't have the concrete infill so you might only be dealing with the pipe to go around and in this case we've kind of got the slope of the boot in the way as well okay then I've got these other guys I want to pull these I've got these other guys here that kind of go up and around and in this case our boot is out or actually inward further than normal so we can't get this piece right back there that's why I needed this extra one here to help fill in this goes underneath the seam there that's going to need a little fine-tuning and I know what you're thinking it looks really crude but once we get it sealed up with the spray foam it's going to be really good you lose a lot of heat and and air flow there's a lot of air flow through these spaces so it's very important to have them sealed up I'm just using a drywall saw if you're just using doing straight cuts or whatever simply a utility knife will do it but just kind of carving it out it doesn't have to be a super tight fit because we're going to fill in all the gaps with foam afterwards let's try this piece again it's a little bit better like I said this is not exactly what you're going to find every time but okay so you basically want to get it in there you've got all these gaps though okay we need to spray foam those up and seal them all up nice and tight what this does is it not only doing this do it doing it this way not only seals and insulates it there sorry not only insulates it but it seals it as well so you don't have to run a poly vapour barrier up in there so as long as you're using two inch foam it'll act as your vapor barrier as well and as long as you get all this sealed up really well you'll see the next one will be a lot better a lot nicer to work with but just use some can spray foam I might advise that you have rubber gloves and safety glasses on as well when you're doing this so I just want to seal up any voids that I find all the way around and again it's a little tricky because of this duct in the way but just do the absolute best you can around it the spray foam will actually kind of bond that rigid foam in place as well and basically hold it there for you okay I can't see my other side so I'm just going to move my ladder so I'm going to have a look up in there now there's a gap there I'm sorry but I'm going to be in the way here okay so that's going to seal that all up nice and tight I'm just going to go on to the next one which is a more typical space where there's no obstructions in there I mean sometimes there's going to be wiring all that kind of stuff so you just gotta fix it kind of got to make it up that's best best you can as you go depending what your situation is so this one I can use a full thickness of our 12 and there in fact that's probably a little bit high I'm just going to cut a little bit off here okay you don't want to compact it in there real tight because it will just won't have any R value at all pre-cut your block of styrofoam 2-inch that's a little tight - this doesn't have to be tight in fact it's better if you have the gap there to properly fill it okay so that you can see I've got a good eighth inch gap all the way around I'm just going to simply fill that crevice in so you can see how a standard one actually is pretty quick and easy to do okay and that's just sealing that rate up that foam will expand and do its thing and harden up in fairly short time so so you can go along do pretty much do this on any one of these spots one thing I that I will warn you about if you're doing this in a room where there's not going to be a finished ceiling utility room something like this most areas will not allow this to be exposed because of fire I believe it gives off noxious fumes when it when it burns so what they require then is it's covered with something that's it's fireproof we're in my area of what I can do is I can actually not put the bad insulation behind it I'll put the rigid foam right back in there well if you have a deep crevice you might want a little bit of bad insulation because you want to seal this to the top of your plate for sure so it needs to at least be on to the top plate of your wall and then if I cover it with our 14 rocks all insulation which has fireproof quality to it then that passes code here because it's got that separation from you know from fire and that sort of thing so okay so that's that's just another way that you can insulate your box and joists like that so hopefully that gives you the information you need if you have any other further questions you can go to our forum like like I always say when every one of my videos go there post your question up and I'll be sure to answer it you can follow follow us along on Facebook or Twitter and you can also check us out if we have a patreon campaign going on right now so if you want to go there and check that out you can and we hope that this was helpful and good luck with your project

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 166,247

Rating: 4.8616843 out of 5

Keywords: rigid, foam, styrofoam, insulation, insulate, box, rim, end, joist, joists, basement, r value, method, expanding foam, pink, seal, vapour, vapor, leakage, headers, framing

Id: Y1gmGCwlJqg

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2016