Insulating the Basement: Part I (Click here for Part II)
We’ll start with the biggest issue: insulation. I am the only member of the household that ever walks along the first floor with no socks on (usually in the morning when I’m making my wife breakfast and lunch). As the months passed by and the season slowly changed to winter, I began to notice that certain parts of the floor could vary in temperature quite dramatically. I didn’t give it too much thought at the time. After all, it was the basement that was below the floor and basements are supposed to be cool.
When we got our electric bill in January, something was definitely wrong with our heating system. Many questions began to come over me and I wracked my brain thinking back to the depths of my childhood to try to remember. How often did my parent’s heating system kick on? How long would it run before it shut off? How long would it stay off before the heat dissipated and it came back on again? What impact would an electric heating system have versus a gas system? I have shared walls for part of the first floor and what would that have on heat loss?
The next day, as I was pouring over these questions, I was outside and looking at the basement windows. We have 4 basement windows as viewed from the outside – 3 original single pane true divided light with wood sashes, and a new double pane nearest the kitchen door. 2 of the original windows had been boarded up with plywood from the days when the house was in complete disarray prior to being flipped. The first developer had put in the new window, but he went bellyup and sold to the second developer. The second developer did not want windows in the basement, so he put up new drywall in the basement and so, viewed from inside the house there are no basement windows.
Suddenly it hit me. The spots on the first floor that were substantially cooler were aligned with the basement windows below. I peeled off the plywood and wiped away the sixty years of cobwebs and spider webs and dirt. I peered inside and discovered that there was no insulation between the drywall and the window. Behind the next window, some of the sashes had disintegrated and panes were missing. Heat had just been sucking right out of the house.
I didn’t have a drywall saw but that wasn’t going to stop me. Drilling a hole in the basement wall with the biggest drill bit I had, I confirmed that I had made a spot that lined up with the first window. Estimating from the outside about how far I had between the studs, I proceeded to use the smallest drill bit to make about a hundred holes in the shape of a square. Then, using a kitchen steak knife, I cut it out (worked great) and... well it is certainly a weird feeling to cut a hole in a wall and find a window on the other side!
That door is from the closet in the master bedroom - I'll write about why it's in the basement another time.
Old, original windows. The foundation of the house is between 90 and 100 years old. Some of these windows were original, or appeared as such.
I proceeded to cut out the remaining holes and find all the missing windows the the basement. Each time I cut a hole in the drywall, I could feel the breeze as the heat was just getting sucked right out the window (or in the case of the new double pane in the image below, it was escaping around the frame).
The cracks around the window frame here were not so evident prior to this. I took a screwdriver and removed the stone, joint and tuck work that had turned to dust, and that opened up the hole more dramatically. Once this was done, I took a half dozen bottles of the spray foam and proceeded to seal up all the cracks around the windows.
I took a long exposure to capture this telling image. How weird to have the light coming into a basement that did not have windows before.More fun as the story continues in Part II.
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