Wall-vision

Dan-IA · Dec 25, 2009

Anybody know a quick way to x-ray vision in an old house?

It"s cold in there but I don"t want to disturb the plaster and lath if I can avoid it. But I suspect my outer walls might be empty and I"d like to pump "em full of blown-in insulation if I"m right.

But I"m not sure, they might be hollow.

I"ve tried the tap test, my ears aren"t discriminating enough to discern if there"s insulation in there or not.

Parts of my house are approaching 200 years old, and the youngest parts are about 70.

Also what can I do in the winter to make it tighter? I plastic-coated the windows but it keeps coming loose!

Anonymous-0 · Dec 25, 2009

Pretty common over here to insulate from the outside. We're looking at 4 inches of styrofoam or rockwool and board & batten over it and 6 inches in the rafters. I imagine your walls are hollow. Helped gut a lot of old plaster houses that were.

Dave

Doug - Iowa · Dec 25, 2009

Couple of houses around here (central Iowa) done with this outfit from Rochester MN

http://www.hpimn.com/home

They"ve been happy with it from what I hear.

Dan-IA · Dec 25, 2009

And you can never spend too much on fertilizer or insulation right? That money always makes you money!

That's what I heard. Anything else you can never go too heavy on?

mike321 · Dec 25, 2009

Have someone with a thermal imagine camera come in. You wont believe the places you are loosing heat.

gregk · Dec 25, 2009

our last house had 4 inches of insulation in the attic, crawlspace only, no insulaton in the walls, but they were backplastered and old drafty windows. My wife and I went through one room a year and gutted it. We rewired it, put insulation in the walls added a vapor barrier and put in new double pane windows. Out of a $300 plus elec bill for three months every winter( the house was only 720 square feet) each room saved us about 20 dollars a month. Then we blew insulation into the attic, cost about $250 and paid for itself that winter in the savings, each room cost about $1000 to do new carpet and all. Best insulation for the money was in the attic but it all helps. Just my experience I'm sure someone else has had different luck too

Bill(Wis) · Dec 25, 2009

Diamonds.

Anonymous-0 · Dec 25, 2009

Go to your local auto parts store and buy a non-contact infrared thermometer. Best tax deductible toy I ever bought and cheap too.

Just point the gun at an object with the built in laser pointer and it will tell you the temperature of whatever your pointing at.

Great for finding hot bearings, gearboxes, testing water or oil temps etc. I've used it on my old fuel oil burning furnace and tested radiators and electric baseboards. Find out instantly the temp of your fridge, freezer or air conditioner.

I've even used it at calving time to see if the calf warmer was warm enough and even can get a decent reading on the calf itself it you point it in the right places.

Started walking around the house with it last winter and boy did it open my eyes to heat loss from certain windows and doors and differences in temp from room to room from poor heat distribution. Also amazed at the temperature differences between the floor and ceiling and certain walls are much colder than others.

greenbeanman in Kansas · Dec 25, 2009

You can sometimes tell by removing a plugin or switch plate to see if there is insulation around the box.

Also from the sill plate to see if wires going up go through insulation or just an air gap.

Pat-CT · Dec 26, 2009

If you find out you dont have insulation in the walls, i would use the spray stuff that way you can just poke a hole in the wall and spray it in.

Anonymous-0 · Dec 26, 2009

If lathe and plaster on the inside, no round hole plugs in original siding, most likely the walls are hollow. No insulation in attic would be another good sign walls are hollow. Although, I do know of houses with no insulation in attics due to design of structure. Yet, insulation is in the walls.

Dan-IA · Dec 26, 2009

Diamonds come in inverse proportion to nagging.

Zachary Hoyt · Dec 26, 2009

When we moved to NY in 2001 the farmhouse was in bad shape, so once we got the money together we (mostly I) tore the old waterlogged clapboards off, removed the sheathing, insulated the walls after removing the mounds of chewed up black walnut shells, rewired, replaced the windows and some of the doors, put up sheathing and housewrap and vinyl siding. It was a big job, but it saved us having to tear out the lath and plaster, which was about the only good thing about the house aside from the frame. It made a huge difference, although it was a lot of work too. I put a new roof on the next year, and had to tear off 4 layers of old shingles to do it. I don't have a before pic of the house in the computer because we had an analog camera back then.
Zach

Anonymous-0 · Dec 26, 2009

Worked on one old house like that and the walls were full of bricks. Looks like they used bricks to fill the voids and keep out the mice and rats. Some of the boards on the outside walls were 22 inches wide and had to be drilled in order to drive in a nail. The house at one point in time was moved from AnnArbor to Plymouth on skids pulled by horses and slid over intentionally iced roads. While much of the house was built pretty well the floors were very weak and they felt like walking on a trampoline.

Wall-vision

Dan-IA

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Doug - Iowa

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mike321

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Bill(Wis)

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