Insulation: 5 steps to a more efficient building and why I don't use spray foam

hey what's up guys it's Kyle from RRbuildings and I'm coming at you with a video on insulation and most importantly insulation for post frame construction now obviously I am in northern Illinois so this might not pertain to people way up in the northern regions like Canada or way down south in Texas you got to consider your region and make sure you talk to a local architect or engineer whoever you're consulting with your project but hopefully these five tips that I'm gonna throw at you are helpful when considering your next post frame job so let's go ahead and I'll take you through these different points that I think are important so the first thing that we're gonna talk about number one is a weather barrier now for us on our region we're not interested in having a vapour barrier on the exterior because we're mainly in a heating season so we're going to be having warm air inside and our cold airs on the outside versus like let's say if you go down south where most the time you're cooling your house you're probably going to want that vapor barrier on the outside the way I understand it this house rap here is more just for weather we're trying to keep any potential moisture out from getting into the building whether it be rain or wind driven rain whatever but more importantly we're looking for wind infiltration we don't want wind coming into the building because that is how you have heat loss so that is the main purpose of the vapor barrier alright so now that we've talked about air infiltration and stopping it to come into your building let's talk about the air that we do want and that is gonna come from your vented soffit typical post frames that you might see have no soffits and you know what happens they sweat a lot because condensation builds up inside and there's nowhere for that condensation to go so our number one priority is always ensuring that we install a vented soffit but we only vent the eaves because we want those solid gables not to let the air in and make the easy in-and-out exchange with the ridge vent so you got two key factors you've got your vented soffit and you've got your vented ridge cap but then you got to make sure that your Gables are solid so the air works like a chimney all the way from your eve out through your ridge vent now with our ridge vent some people want to know what we're using up there and what we use is called I do believe it's called Unova it could be called versa vent I think our supplier has gone through a couple different brand name but it's all the same it's a foam of material that the wind is able to go through and to get that ventilation but it's gonna stop I think up to a hundred and ten mile per hour wind driven rain so we want to make sure no wind or snow is blowing up into that Ridge but we also want to make sure that we get good airflow coming out of that Ridge from our soffit so this is a key factor in keeping those attic spaces the same or very close to the same temperature and humidity level as your outside and that's what's going to prevent your condensation on the underside of your steel all right so that kind of wraps up the things outside that I think you need to consider when insulating your post frame now we're going to go to the inside and what we've got here is this is down at our foundation detail and it's not a typical foundation where you've got a full concrete footing wall but we do have our concrete piers and then what we've got is a 2 by 8 ground contact treated piece of lumber on the inside on the outside our grade is down here at the bottom of this board but we actually pour our concrete this is all gonna be filled in with a subgrade maybe a gravel aggregate whatever and then the concrete will start just below this board and come up four inches so what we do is we take our insulation and we if you look down here you're gonna have what we call a rat board we're gonna have what we call our rat board and that's really just to protect anything from coming up into the wall hence the name rat board but what we like to do is it looks like a u-channel and we have our our nineteen fiberglass tucked down into this cavity and the reason for that is I don't like when concrete is poured out to the outside grade board I don't like to encapsulate our columns I like it to be free-floating on the inside of the building so I think this is an important detail when insulating your building because you want this encapsulation to help with the frieze underneath your concrete slab and it's gonna help that concrete slab from getting cold from the outside temperature and it's gonna maintain your heat real nice alright so now that we have talked about that foundation detail you saw that we like to use a fiberglass insulation and what we're using is an AR 19 it's made for 2x6 wall cavities and what I really love about fiberglass because I know I'm gonna get a ton of questions down below why don't you just use spray foam spray foam is better and I would not disagree with that i think spray-foam has its places however as you can see behind me fiberglass is great for what we're doing because we've got these eight-foot bays and what I mean by that is a lot of your standard stick-frame buildings are going to be 2x4 or 2x6 construction every 16 inches and that really leaves a lot of potential breaks in your insulation package and in your envelope of your building for heat loss and whatever and I think the way we've got our post frame eight foot on center we've just got a great huge cavernous cavity that that bat sits in and allows us to have a really good insulating factor and when you couple that with the house wrap which is keeping the air from infiltrating and that are 19 batt it's gonna be a very efficient product and I think that what I always tell my customers is you know because they always ask me should we spray foam I say what is the cost of the spray foam what is the cost of the fiberglass what is gonna be your return on that investment and how long is it gonna take because in the end I know it's gonna be efficient to do fiberglass we have done it a lot but there's always going to be that you know specific task that requires I think a foam to get that good insulation I just don't think it is in a post frame if you are doing a remodel job if you have a job that is existing and it's got old tin on it and you just think man I don't know how to get this thing properly house wrapped because you don't have that ability unless you tear off your steel I think that is where a good idea would be to install like a one-inch foam they call it like a flashing batt so you're just gonna get that one inch seal around everything and not let any of that air infiltrate and then you're gonna come in with a with a bat to get your r-value up to whatever you know the spec is in your area because for us our 19 is enough after we go past that you start having a diminishing return and I'm all about value I want the customer to get the most for their money not just blow it to say they have the most insulation all right I lost track of how many points to look at I know I told you guys there was five I feel like I've keep on finding more things to talk about so this is probably one of the most controversial controversial controversial things in regards to insulating a homebuilding whatever and that's vapor barrier because vapor barrier is gonna vary depending on where you are building so in my area vapor barrier is like borderline you know some people say it's the best some people say don't use it I personally like it because we're dealing with metal skin buildings and this is gonna stop that warm moist air inside your shop that's being heated from transferring through the insulation and grabbing onto the backside of that cold metal on a cold day and that's what's going to prevent that sweat and that condensation from ruining and deteriorating your lumber so I think it's important because on this side the insulation the material should be the same temperature as your shop which means that air is not going to condensate you can see how we do this it runs underneath of our framing and we pinch that type to the the post but then we like to let it go over our grade board and then just use our base trim to pitch it tighten so that's what's going to give us our seal all right so here's another thing that I find important and that is well actually two things we're gonna talk three things I'm gonna make three things right here first is gonna be this house wrap right here we use just leftover rolls of house wrap and we call these our attic air deflectors and what they're doing is out on the other side of this paper is our soffit now if we didn't have these here when we come up and we blow the insulation into our ceilings all of that insulation is gonna get blown out into that cavity of the soffit it's gonna block your soffit and it's gonna become a mess and it's not gonna do what you want your soffits to do which is breathe we fastened this out here on our last nailer on the top and we bring it up so that the air can come up through here and it's gonna get all the way up to the ridge vent now the second thing I want to show you right here is our trusses so you wouldn't think trusses have anything to do with energy efficiency but they do so what we do standard on all of our buildings minimally is a 15 and a half inch heel now what that means is if you were to take a tape measure and measure out at our heel this is the heel the end of the truss it's going to be 15 and a half inches what that allows us to do is to put this attic air deflector here and still blow in an AR 38 insulation all the way out to the eave the edge of our building and then that insulation rolls right down into our wall insulation and the well that actually was the third thing I wanted to talk about how our ceiling blown in fiberglass meets our wall fiberglass to get that full capsulated insulation barrier for our building a lot of people want to know why don't we insulate our roofs or have some sort of a condensation barrier there that is because our ceilings is you can see behind me we're gonna do our vapor barrier just like our walls and then we're gonna blow in an AR 38 fiberglass which I find to be the best value for your money in a ceiling and in our area and anything over in our 38 once again you're gonna be basically paying for diminishing returns on the value so that's usually where we stop we can go a little bit higher if people want to just wanted to point out that we put ceilings in all of our shops and we blow in our fiberglass so a lot of people see these videos and they're like you spend all this time and detail on the walls why don't you have insulation in your ceiling we do it just doesn't get blown in until the whole job is done electricians have ran their wiring or whatever anybody needs to do up in the attic space now something that's just as important as how you insulate the building is what accessories you use like your wok doors or your windows now our wok doors are always going to be a steel frame and I think that's a necessity for a post frame just due to the construction and the way the building does move a little bit with a diaphragm we need that strong structural steel frame door so what's very important is you'll notice here on this door the inside and outside sections of this door are joined together with a thermal break and that is gonna keep the door interior from getting really icy cold and condensating so that's important and as well as our windows our windows are gonna be a window that you would typically see in your home it's gonna have the the low E glass the argon all that good stuff and it's gonna be energy-efficient so make sure you got good walk doors you got good windows and good garage doors because garage doors are a huge energy-sucking area of your building so don't be afraid to spend a little bit more money and get a little bit better garage door and you will fake tile later so there you go guys I don't know how many points I'll have to recount this as I watch the video but hopefully these were all things that will help you guys tips and tricks when you guys are insulating or having a contractor insulate your building now remember this is Northern Illinois it does not always equal out across the country and across the world depending on where you're at so make sure you check with your local code local you know officials whatever that is make sure you do that don't just say our our buildings did it so it's perfect because that's not always the case so I thank you for watching the video hopefully you learned something and hopefully if I'm doing something or you think I could better the insulation package of our buildings for our customers drop it down below in a comment I would greatly appreciate it as I am constantly trying to make a better valued product for our customers also if you haven't already please hit that subscribe button if you're enjoying the channel and more importantly if you think you know somebody that is in need of this information share the video with them because I would like to help out anybody that I can so thanks a lot and we'll see you guys on the next video hey big shout-out to Greg thanks for filming this video Greg thanks buddy appreciate it

Channel: RR Buildings

Views: 1,143,972

Rating: 4.8845515 out of 5

Keywords: spray foam insulation metal building, spray foam post, efficient building design, is spray foam bad, insulation tips and tricks, insulating a garage, insulating a garage ceiling, insulating a garage wall, insulating a garage attic, insulating a garage roof, don't use spray foam, 5 steps, efficient building

Id: OUYCbQSErAU

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 28 2018