Building our retirement home

[TomSeller]

I'm not sure heat in an attic is a benefit. It sure cost more to A/C a house when the attic is extremely hot. But I agree air flow is important.

I think Eddie is implying that whatever heat does develop in the attic is best vented out the top vents and have the living spaces well insulated from the attic heat, not that you want a hot attic.

 

[CurlyDave]

I do have another question

We will be installing a wood ceiling. This will run the entire length of the vaulted roof - covering the front/rear porches and the great room.

We see this is normally done in pine, so that is where we have been leaning. The wife, however, does not like the busy look of a ceiling full of knotholes. So, we checked out "clear" pine as an alternative. The basic stuff,in 1x8, is about 65 cents per linear foot. The clear is about $5.64 per linear foot. We will be installing close to 4300 linear feet of 1x8.

The question - Is there an alternative? Can I find something that looks better than knothole pine but cost less than clear? Has anyone installed a different type of wood they like?

Consider cedar. It is available in S4S (smooth on all sides), stains nicely, and is much less expensive than clear pine. A few knots, but way less than regular pine.

When you have it milled, consider shiplap instead of T&G. It is very hard to tell the difference in the look of the installed product, but shiplap has the great advantage that the boards do not lock together. It is easy to remove and replace one board, if it is damaged in installation, or even afterward. Or if you just need access to the space behind the ceiling.

Sure, any carpenter will claim he can remove and replace just one T&G board, but it is a big job compared to a shiplap installation. The cost is just about the same. Shiplap is probably not in stock, but every mill knows how to make it, and you will be getting enough that a non-standard shape is not going to cost much extra if anything.

 

[EddieWalker]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I disagree or maybe just don't understand your logic as cooling the attic space is one of the main objectives of spray foaming the roof line. It's also one of the biggest contributing factors to saving you energy and money. How is that a waste of time?

Can you expand on your thoughts?

You are bringing up two very different approaches to insulating a house that has nothing to do with venting an attic.

If you insulate your attic with any form of traditional fiberglass or some of the newer versions of blown in insulation, you are creating a barrier between the conditioned living space below the ceiling and the attic space above the ceiling. As more and more research goes into this, the standards have changed in how much to use to get the best results. The last I've heard, you want R 60 in your attic. This is the amount that will best keep the house cool or hot regardless of what is going on outside the house.

When insulating with this method, you have to have air flow to keep your lumber dry. First thing in the morning when the sun starts heating up the outside of the house, the cooler temps in the house will lead to condensation forming on the surface of everything in there if the humidity levels are high. This doesn't happen every day, but it does happen enough days out of the year to be a major concern. Venting has nothing to do with trying to lower the temperature of the attic space. Venting is all about drying off the moisture of the condensation.

Cooling off an attic is a sales gimmick that people have been using for decades to sell you something you don't need. First they convince you that you will save money on your energy bill if your attic isn't as hot because then it wont take as much energy to cool off your house. Then they convince you to install bigger fans because common sense has proven to you that if you sit in front of a fan, it will cool you off. This is flawed logic because at the very most you will only lower the temperature a few degrees, and that is only during the cooler times of the day. During the heat of the day, it's not going to do anything except move more air around. That's not a bad thing, it just doesn't justify the cost of what was installed, or the electricity it cost to run the fan.

More attic insulation will solve everything and give you real, easy to measure results in energy use. Sadly, it's really is that simple.

Spray foam has opened up all sorts of new and better ways to insulate a house. Closed cell has an amazing R value that also acts as a wind barrier. Open cell is just cheap junk and should never be used because it's more expensive then fiberglass with the same R value and it holds moisture. Homes will be rotting out from the inside because of open cell foam. If you want to spend the money on closed cell, and in a lot of applications, its money well spent, then it has been proven that spraying the outer shell of the home, which is the actual roof of the house is more energy efficient then the traditional methods. Closed cell eliminates venting, which means that another method must be used depending on what is used for the roof. If you change one thing, everything else has to be considered. You are now heating and cooling the attic space, so this also has to be considered when buying your HVAC system.

If you go with the whole house spray foam method, there are a lot of factors besides paying four times as much money for your insulation. If your energy bills are very high and you will be living there for decades, it makes sense. I plan on doing it for my addition where I will have a vaulted exposed beam ceiling, but not anywhere where I have flat ceilings.

 

[EddieWalker]

I do have another question

We will be installing a wood ceiling. This will run the entire length of the vaulted roof - covering the front/rear porches and the great room.

We see this is normally done in pine, so that is where we have been leaning. The wife, however, does not like the busy look of a ceiling full of knotholes. So, we checked out "clear" pine as an alternative. The basic stuff,in 1x8, is about 65 cents per linear foot. The clear is about $5.64 per linear foot. We will be installing close to 4300 linear feet of 1x8.

The question - Is there an alternative? Can I find something that looks better than knothole pine but cost less than clear? Has anyone installed a different type of wood they like?

Have you looked on Craigslist in there Materials Section? I've found several sawmills less then an hour away from me that have wood less then a quarter of what it's for sale at Home Depot and Lowes. I have one client who drove several hours to Arkansas to get some clear pine slabs that I built a mantle for his fireplace out of that was extremely cheap and totally clear.

 

[JRobyn]

Our vaulted ceilings are all T&G white pine (with knots). But we got a good price on it from the local log home manufacturer/mill. They have all the materials and machinery to do most anything. IIRC, they also had clear pine. We bought some materials from both Honest Abe (beams) and from Jim Barna (T&G).



- Jay

 

[sld]

Eddie, I respect your experience and knowledge but you are dead wrong on this. I have an attic fan and monitor the temps in the summer closely. I also keep track of energy bills.

In the heat of the summer the attic, with just soffit and roof vents will easily see 140 degrees. I turn the fan on and within 90 minutes the attic temps are down to ambient during the hottest part of the day. Heck, they will drop 15 degrees within minutes. This fan pulls 2.8 amps max. This last summer the fan drastically reduced our electric bill during the summer. It seems to me the fan is very beneficial to shed excess heat from the attic. The fan from Home Depot cost 200.00 and I installed it.

This fall I increased the attic insulation to R60. I have already noticed a difference and look forward to seeing the impact next summer.

Simple physics will tell you that two compartments of unequal temperature will try and equalize. The insulation factor slows this down but does not stop it. In the summer, a cooler attic will equal a cooler house for sure.

 

[AGRIMAN]

You are bringing up two very different approaches to insulating a house that has nothing to do with venting an attic. .

No sir, I simply asked you to expand on comments you made related to cooling an attic. I do find some of your opinions interesting to say the least.

While some of your comments on closed cell foam are correct, your comments on open cell just confirms that you do not have a true understanding of spray foam, the advantages/disadvantages of each or how they can be used.

Perhaps this is a discussion for another thread as we are going way off topic. My apologies to the OP.

 

[KiotiKowboy]

Rather than trying to respond individually ... Thanks to all who have commented on my flood lights and ceiling questions.

As for the side conversations, i don't mind at all. We'll be insulating very soon, using a mix of foam and spray cellulose for exteriors - and roll batting for interior walls. I appreciate those who know far more than I are willing to share in these forums

 

[tbrooks26]

I second the cedar shiplap. I will be using reclaimed cedar siding, called channel rustic, for my ceilings. I will be putting the old painted side up. From the back (the side I will have showing) it looks like tng v-groove. Of course cedar isn't real cheap either, when your buying it new. When your getting paid to take it down and haul it off, its an added bonus

 

[sld]

Any update KK?

I was hoping the "attic cooling is a waste" experts would chime back in but I guess not.

For your part of the country if you can incorporate some serious attic ventilation it will pay off very quickly.