Right Vs Wrong: Installing Insulation Batts In Exterior Walls - Part One

hi I'm bill babbit owens-corning today we're at the Owens Corning science Technology Center in Granville Ohio we've got three test homes here on site which we use for installation development in an evaluation today we're going to use one of the test tones to install bats in exterior walls and try and understand what happens when you do it right and when you do it wrong let's go inside take a look we all know there's a right way and a wrong way to install bats in exterior walls but does it really make a difference today we're going to find out we're going to make some mistakes intentionally in this wall and then use infrared photography to find out exactly what kind of difference it makes and remember the homeowner has to live with any mistakes forever we've got smart thirteen Fastpass here that are a little bit too short for the cavity so let's install them the right way in the wrong way thank see we've been a little bit of a gap here I wonder if that makes much difference we've got a gap here as well now let's go ahead and patch this the right way I've pre-cut a small piece here to fit this gap and fill up that cavity and then we'll tape it to seal the vapor barrier on the flipside this is a bat that's too long for the cavity now the proper way to install this of course is to cut off the excess at the bottom and fit it in nicely however it's often tempting and faster just to tuck it in at the bottom number one you may have problems with the inspector but number two you're also going to leave a gap here and we'll see later on an infrared if that shows up unfortunately wall constructions not always perfect and sometimes you get a wall cavity that's wider than standard that presents a special problem for installing the bat because you've got a bat that's narrower than the cavity now the proper way to install the bat would be to cut a piece and fill that gap along the side of the bat unfortunately the common practice can be to just open up that flange and stretch it out and just cover the cavity with that who knows that that gaps behind there you're likely not to get caught by the inspector but it does leave a big gap for heat losses where you do that with competitive insulation that's often easy to do because the flange is open up very easily but it clearly it's not the right thing to do when installing it back we've got a couple cavities here that are only about 11 inches wide and there's two ways to do this as well I've pre-cut this bat down to the proper width so it's going to fit in here nicely and fill out the cavity now the lazy man's way maybe to just take the bat full bat not bother to cut it and put it in I think we're going to find this does not insulate nearly as well as a properly cut back we find a lot of nooks and crannies like this in houses and easiest thing to do is usually find a piece of scrap you trimmed off from something else and just wide it in that cavity you see this done quite often and it does fill the cavity but does it really insulate properly we've got a couple of odd sized cavities here just to demonstrate a point when you get something like this you clearly need to cut a piece to fit this exactly and properly I've pre-cut this piece to this space to give me a piece of insulation that's going to fill out that cavity very nicely and fully the other way to do it and it's often tempting to grab a piece of scrap off the floor and just wad it in that cavity and when you do that you're really not going to get it insulated like it ought to be so that's something you really need to avoid I think we'll see a difference when we look at the video with these two cavities one of the newer innovations for owens-corning is the fast bat which is just a flange Allah spat for exterior walls and we know it's something that stalls a lot faster than a standard bat but also I think it might insulate a tad better as well it fills out the cavity very nicely and it fills the cavity fully all the way across stator bats as you know can be friction fit or face stapled or inset stapled because most drywallers don't care for face stapling large majority of installers inset staple the standard bats we know that you need full thickness gets a full r-value so what happens if you get a thin batter doesn't recover properly hopefully you don't see many of those from owens-corning so I'm gonna take this bad and just dis compress it smash it in to simulate what happens if you don't have full recovery very often with exterior walls you're going to encounter wiring like this for several ways to install around this the easy way clearly is to just tuck in the bat and not worry about it the proper way of course is to split around that wire and there's different ways to split but the important thing is that you tuck the fiberglass behind the wire so the cavity is filled completely and properly electrical boxes present kind of a special case ideally you should foam behind then around the box or at least insert fiberglass insulation behind the box to prevent the heat loss through the box in this case we're just going to cut and tuck which is is a fairly common practice but we said you need to insulate properly around the electrical box which means either putting fiber left behind the box or else foaming around the box now I think we can safely say this is a overkill this is a lot of foam but it'll certainly cert me to do the job I'm going to go ahead and tuck this behind the the wire and put the bed into place and I've already cut this bad to fit neatly around the box so we've got the phone there we've got the bat and face and neatly cut around the box like we've got a pretty good insulation job right the hard parts done we've got all the walls insulated now the fun begins we're going to go ahead and put the drywall up wait for a cold morning and use the infrared thermography see what these walls look like it should be very interesting

Channel: IDI Distributors

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Keywords: Insulation, construction, remodeling, energy, efficient, tips, home insulation, energy efficiency, save energy, save money, save heat, installing instructions, Insulating, saving, building, Installation, home comfort, remodel, upgrade, eco, heat, loss, Owens Corning, batts, exterior walls, right, wrong, residential, difference, mistake, R value, IDI Insulation, Insulation information, Insulation Video, Exterior Walls, Infra-Red Camera

Id: NpkXxHRp8U0

Length: 9min 49sec (589 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2011