We’re nearly ready to enclose the newly framed walls for a kitchen addition and basement build-out in Minneapolis.

There’s just one more step left before we can enclose the walls of this South Minneapolis bungalow, which means it’s insulation time.  With all our rough-ins located and placed, thanks to dedicated HVAC, plumbing, and electrical crews, we can fill the cavities of our exterior walls- plus a few more important spots- with insulation and then move forward with drywall. As you’ll see below, insulation will improve the overall efficiency of this 1919 home. While insulation is critical to the functionality of the home, the drywall stage will provide a much more vivid glimpse of how the updated layout for this main-level addition and basement remodel is shaping up.

Insulation – Yet another way to improve a home’s efficiency through remodeling.

Why do we need insulation in the first place?

Think of insulation as simply a barrier used to prevent the flow of energy, like heat, from one surface to the next. When it comes to remodeling, preventing heat loss or gain between the inside and outside of a home is critical to maintaining a comfortable living environment. As with all our remodels, we want to keep the inside of this South Minneapolis home at a consistent temperature with as little intervention by active heating and cooling systems as possible. We used insulation throughout our building assembly to do just that.

What does resisting heat loss have to do with efficiency? Why care?

We’ve already taken several steps to improve the efficiency of our client’s 1919 bungalow by using appropriate building techniques for our climate and by upgrading the home’s mechanical systems. By resisting unwanted heat loss or gain between surfaces, the insulation we’ve installed will help maintain the interior temperature of the home so that all these new systems won’t be overworked. Decreasing the amount of energy needed to keep the house comfortable will lower future utility bills and keep the new active HVAC systems running better for longer.

When budget and function matter, insulation selections vary.

Spray Foam:
More Expensive, Greater Resistance to Temperature Swings

While spray foam came in at a higher price point than other options, it provided the newly built walls with a higher r-value, a metric defining a material’s resistance to heat flow. With our cold Minnesota winters and warm summers, we opted to use the higher r-value product to insulate extensively at exterior walls and the new basement perimeter walls.

To begin, areas that did not need to be insulated got taped off and covered. With protective equipment keeping the crew safe, our team then began spraying the foam slurry into the designated cavities, like between newly placed framing and rough-ins. The foam expanded to fill nearly any gap where unwanted air could escape or enter the home. Multiple layers were sprayed as needed. The product then had to cure before we came back to shave off any uneven or unwanted foam.

Fiberglass:
Less Expensive, Easy Install

In other areas, like within certain interior walls and soffits, we used fiberglass insulation. We especially prefer to use fiberglass in areas where we believe a future tradesperson may one day need to access a space easily and quickly, given it can be so easily removed and replaced. While the fiberglass insulation was rolled out, cut, and placed into position, the spray foam process was a little more specialized, resulting in an increase in cost. Since not all insulated surfaces require as high of an r-value, utilizing this less expensive product is an important step in protecting our client’s budget without diminishing their investment in a warm, well-built home.