OT:
I have 8-12 inches fiberglass (both blown and bats) in the attic and lots of ventilation, so condensation is no problem. The house was built (1923) with full four-inch studs and unobstructed cavities so packing that with cellulose was not too hard, blowing in through a 2-inch hole. There might be some condensation there in the walls, but there's not much source of water vapor in the winter, and the exterior sheathing is diagonal 2x6 boards, so there are lots of gaps to let moisture escape to the outside, along the stone veneer. Any remaining dampness would be removed by the airconditioning in the summer, I think. Also, moisture is free to leave the house via the attic. Humidity in the house is very low in winter.
No I sure would not try doing anything with your walls. I suppose one could add polyurethane sheathing and more drywall on top of that. But what a mess, trying to make it fit the woodwork.
My wall insulation is a little spotty, since there are cavities above and below windows that are not worth trying to fill. Somebody might go for foamed insulation, but the record on that is mixed. My heating bill for the winter is down to around $600-$800 and I can just live with that. The great thing is the huge thermal mass of the house, with 8-inch stone exterior, tile roof, and plaster on lath interior walls. Countless tons of masonry. That means no heating or cooling (except one window fan) for six months out of the year. A huge tree in summer shades most of the house, and in winter I get some solar heating in a kitchen I added. There's an almost-airtight wood stove inserted into the fireplace (I burn it hot when I use it) with a home-made heat recovery system in the chimney: flexible stainless-steel three-inch auto exhaust pipe reaching 10 feet up and back inside the tile flue and blowing out into the livingroom, with a small squirrel-cage blower attached to the other end under the floor. This produces a stream of 300-degree air directed at a stairwell when the fire is burning. The stove has a pyrex door so it is decorative as well as efficient.
My wife and I now both drive Priuses.
I thought about going into serious rainwater collecting, but realized that the only time I really need rainwater is when it has not been raining, and so only a system capable of storing 10,000 gallons or more made any sense. And too many people already think I am a kook.
As to the real estate crash, I am an indifferent spectator. I paid off the mortgage years ago and I don't want to own anything else. I try to keep my house under-appraised as much as possible to keep taxes low. |
