hello from central IL
 

hello everyone. I am new obviously. I think so far this forum is pretty cool. I love looking at DIY stuff, a lot of times the commercially made products just arent cost effective at this point and part of ecomodding a house/car is about saving money! If anyone around central IL is in need of some labor on a project I would love to get some hands on experience as I just bought a house and need to start getting some ideas on some potential projects.

Welcome to the site. What kind of stuff are you looking into doing with the house?

well to begin with the house was built in 1936 so I think it would be safe to say that its insulation is sub-par. I plan on rennovating the entire second story which isnt much because its a fairly small house. The problem I am running into with insulating the second story is that its actually a 1.5 story house. So the walls are actually the ceiling also. Not a lot of room for insulation. I am looking into the mooney wall technique as a way to break the thermal bridge and to increase the width of the wall/ceiling for some increased insulation. In the rennovation of the second floor I will be removing an old chimney which vents only the water heater. in place of the current water heater I am looking to get a direct vent tankless. what better to feed a tankless water heater than a solar heating system. The house is small enough and I have enough room in my basement to put a large storage tank. so once that is complete I hope to take that heat and use it for space heat as well. at some point I would like to do a graywater to toilet system, but thats the future.

Sounds like a good idea...

Just make sure that your demand water-heater is designed to work with some kind of pre-heated water.

Many of the demand water heaters do not sense the temperature of the water, but rather sense the pressure, and adjust the flame accordingly.

Others (the kind you want) actually sense the temp of the water coming out and adjust accordingly.

-AC_Hacker

good idea. I havent been looking at them much yet. I guess I thought all of them did that. good thing I got that bit of info. Any ideas on good brands/models?

I have a Bosch. My model is not the temp sensing, wish it was...

But it's been cranking right along for many years.

I hear good things about Rinnai.

They both make a temp sensing model.

There's a lot of really inexpensive ones on ebay. Getting parts could be an issue.

-AC_Hacker

Hi!
I have a 1.5 story house as well. When I recently renovated one upstairs room, I put 1/2" thick by 1" wide spacers against the roof rafters for an air gap, and then filled the space with layers of 1 1/2" isoboard. That gave me R27 in the rafters. On the small ceiling portion I have about R52 of rock wool insulation. The knee walls in that room have R20 but the end wall ended up being only R14 (before I came to this site).

that is also an interesting idea. I have thought about using the foam board up there. thats a very diy kind of project. what are the cons of layering foam board in the rafters? I have even thought about using great stuff to seal it off and have the same benefits of the spray foam without the expense.

There really isn't a drawback. Its just a fair amount of work, but as you can see the R-values are really nice.

I have read that in the foam boards you dont lose r-value like you do with sprayed in foam that off gasses over time. any truth to that?