Quote:
Originally Posted by warmwxrules
..Small bedrooms here so we are losing valuable space, but then again...its mainly for sleeping, so the kids can deal with it.
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The rooms in my house are about the same size as yours. I also did some 'in-building' on my place by adding 2" to all the 2x4 studs. That was before I realized the large effect of thermal bridging. So I lost 18% of the insulation value I would have had otherwise... not a minor amount.
By the way, I am now equipped with IR non-contact thermometers, and you can definitely measure the difference in temperature of places in wall structures that allow thermal bridging vs. places that do not. It's not just an energy geek concern, it really happens and it is measurable.
I even think differently about the thermal realities of a wall structure now. Now I realize that the sheetrock is a fairly good conductor of heat energy in a lateral direction... and when you have thermal bridging, you are not just losing heat energy from that one stud-width strip of sheetrock, rather the thermal energy of surrounding sheetrock also flows toward the thermal bridge. I now visualize a wall in the same way that I see a sink full of water, with all the water flowing in the direction of the drain. The water flows in the direction of least resistance. Just so with heat energy.
Since these insights, I have done something similar to what you are considering, with interior framing not coincident with the old framing. Your choices around windows are limited however.
And I do not miss the reduced space. I think that the idea of reduced space is much worse than the actuality.
-AC