Quote:
Originally Posted by JYL
But, this is almost 3500$ in heating for a 2500SF house. You may also feel a chill anytime you get close to some area of the house. The floor is cold too. When the temperature drop bellow 0F, it seems you need to heat the house to 80F to feel any type of comfort in these house.
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Who is paying $3,500 a year to heat a 2,500sf house? I live a bit north of La Cross WI and I'm paying $600 a year to heat a house that size! but I do agree that insulating your rim joists will do wonders for keeping your floors warm allowing you to keep your thermostat set cooler.
We have 3 types of insulation in our sill boxes because our foundation walls are 16" thick stone walls, so where the ends of the joists sit on top of the foundation we have spray foam, the spray foam also comes down on top of the stone wall sealing off drafts there, a large source of drafts, just like the open tops of cinder blocks or open top of a brick wall would have, but where the joists run parallel to the foundation wall we ended up with that area boxed in as well, in the areas that are above grade and stay very dry we had that filled in with cellulose, in the corner of the house that is closer to grade, where water might be an issue, we had it filled with a flowing foam that they pour in and it stays somewhat soft, it can shrink a little over time so it is not ideal but when you need to seal a large enclosed cavity like that with something that will not react with water it seems like a good choice.
So if you are just insulating your sill boxes and wanted a much higher R value, air sealing the cracks and seams then walling off the opening with a chunk of foam, or even ply wood, then filling the cavity with dense pack cellulose seems like a great route to go.