Insultation- A glamorous affair

The house has major knee wall open space and significant water damage from  a leaking roof caused by ice damage in the knee wall area.  The source of this problem is a complete lack of insulation in any of the knee wall areas.  This was causing damage to the roof, the plaster, the fascia and overhangs.

It appears that everybody has a conflicting opinion about how to properly insulate and ventilate knee walls.  I am sure that someone will think that I did it all wrong and that the house should be torn down.  All I know is that the current system (with inherent flaws with ventilation) is surely better than 8 foot tall ice dams and plaster damage from leaking water.  With the improvements, snow sits on the roof and does not build up.  The process to get there, however, was terrible.  As you can see, the spaces were confined.  In certain parts, I crawled through a 2x2 hole to access secret rooms in the house.  It was dusty, dirty, hot and miserable.  I am glad it is done

Knee Walls

1).  We removed the existing "insulation" which consisted of wood dust on paper (a very old form of insulation) and occasional spots of vermiculite (which is processed in the same facility with asbestos).  We wore respirators and protective equipment, but this process was miserable. 

2).  We used spray foam to seal any cracks to the outdoors and cracks along masonry.

3).  Then we pulled up the floor boards and insulated the floors with faceless fiberglass bats.  We pushed it as far under the floor as we could reach. 

4).   We put paper faced batts on the outside walls and in the roof rafters. 

5).  Over top of the batts, we used 1" extruded polystyrene board.  We used foam on the cracks and used exterior house tape to seal out the air.

6).  The pictures don't show it, but I am going to finish up by using more foam board on the floors.

Attic

The house has a nice attic, but it is accessed by a ladder, so we elected to blow it full of insulation.  We don't need the storage space and blown insulation is much easier and cheaper than the process for the knee walls. 

1).  We pulled back insulation from the side walls and removed vermiculite.

2).  We blew insulation down the side walls accessing the walls from the attic.  This enabled us to fill some of the walls in the living spaces.

3).  We blew the attic 15" deep with cellulose insulation and sealed up the hatch.  Now I hope to never go in the attic again.

 At the end there was a large space where I could stand up, but I needed to crawl through to get there.

 This is one of the five knee wall spaces in the house.  I accessed this through the ceiling of the living room.  This area is about 3 feet by 8 feet of floor space by 8 feet tall.

 The stink pipe had caused the leak and the water damage.

This is the window seat in the stairway railing.  Don't ask me what lives back there.

This knee wall space doubles as a huge closet. 6x10 feet.

 Here is Saki nailing up the board and batts.  This was the easiest knee wall to access and work in.  It was also the cleanest.

Foam and tape applied.  We are going to do the floor after I replace the plumbing in the bathroom. 
I built an access door in the event I ever need to get into that space.

 It worked.  You can see the additional snow accumulation in the knee wall areas, which means the snow is not melting from heat escape.

Once the attic is fully insulated I hope the rest of the roof will also be fixed.  The icicle buildup is very minimal now that it is all fixed.  It appears to be a huge improvement.