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Re: stale basement air

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Live, did you use Icenene or Sealection 500? I have my attic all ready

for it except for some small details and I will be having it sprayed

in. I think my attic is almost cleaner than the house now since the

house gets air from basement where there is problem and also some

plaster cracks that I'm sure allow air from wall cavities in to house.

I WAS positively pressurizing house with a fresh air intake that I

jerry-rigged myself BUT then I bought the new furnace and they had to

exhaust furnace on same side as my 'fresh air intake' so I had to close

it off since they were too close together. House air seemed fresher

and house was warmer when I had fresh air intake pulling air, small

amount right into return side of furnace. Similar to HRV but positive

pressurizing instead of equal pressure. But back to foam, did you

spray it under roof rafters or on attic floor? Thanks.

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

>

> HRV. I really think ours paid for itself last summer.. Its hard to

tell

> exactly, because we also had our attic done and foam put in (BTW, its

> working really well.. we have the second best insulated house in this

> neighborhood, if you go by snow melt on roof..)

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Make sure you have sealed up vents, etc, and that you have thought

through how you will ventilate the space.

They both are pretty much the same.. ..

The Sealection stuff and the Icynene are very similar and we were

talking to two dealers and it basically came down to tming because we

had a fairly narrow window of time we needed to get it in there

during.

It worked pretty well, I have photos of them during the process and

what it looked like afterward, before they shaved the drippings off..

Pretty cool.. Like a cave, with stalagtites! I almost wish we could

have kept it that way, but of course, then we would have gotten in

trouble because its a fire hazard.. (if the space is used at all there

needs to be fire-stop-rated material covering it.)

It deadens sound quite a bit, thats another benefit.

I am trying to figure out the best way to do the basement and ground

floor walls too.. without having holes..

The fact that they have to come in and do it all in one fell swoop

limits you somewhat because you have to have it planned out very well

exactly where you are going to put it.

I wish that we had also had them do some other parts of the house.

Now I can see that we could have done much more.. (inside of walls on

ground floor and also

But t wasn't so expensive that its not possible to do it everywhere. I

would DEFINITELY do it during the warmer months because you NEED to

have your windows open 24/7 for several days afterward.. it smells

strongly for at least a week..and you can still smell a tiny bit of

smell for at least a month after that.. But now it doesn't smell at

all.

The change in the dynamics of a home, how much warmer and less drafty

it becomes, is dramatic..

Quite a big difference!

If you have complex roof lines, make sure they get it in the

crevices.. It drips...

<barb1283@...> wrote:

> Live, did you use Icenene or Sealection 500?

Sealection 500, because we needed to get going on the drywall..

I have my attic all ready

> for it except for some small details and I will be having it sprayed

> in.

It will stick better if you do it on a fairly warm day..

I think my attic is almost cleaner than the house now since the

> house gets air from basement where there is problem and also some

> plaster cracks that I'm sure allow air from wall cavities in to house.

> I WAS positively pressurizing house with a fresh air intake that I

> jerry-rigged myself BUT then I bought the new furnace and they had to

> exhaust furnace on same side as my 'fresh air intake' so I had to close

> it off since they were too close together.

That's weird that they exhaust it on the side of the house.. There

must not be a lot of exhaust?

>House air seemed fresher

> and house was warmer when I had fresh air intake pulling air, small

> amount right into return side of furnace. Similar to HRV but positive

> pressurizing instead of equal pressure.

But it must be freezing cold.. Ouch.. You could add a timer to cycle

it, I suppose.. That would be cheap but work..

We have a fancy timer that cycles our HRV 15 minutes out of every

hour.. its an EDF-5, I think.. pricey, at frst I thought " we dont need

that " but

again, I'm glad we got it..

Basically, you will want the ability to cycle it on and off.. and turn

it up and down..

>But back to foam, did you

> spray it under roof rafters or on attic floor? Thanks.

Under roof rafters..

It wasn't that expensive.. I would have to look for the receipt but it

was under $3k for the entire attic..

(our house is tiny, though.. its much smaller than the average house

in the USA today)

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How could you do basement walls with foam?? Aren't you supposed to

leave those bare or just painted?? It would be great to foam basement

walls so it wouldn't be so cold down there and also keep air flow from

underground. If you sprayed Sealection on them, you could leave it

like that because they couldn't be washed and I would imagine it would

get dusty. I wonder if you could then put some sort of cement board

over that, foam the walls and then put cement board over that? Is that

what you are thinking of, putting in on the basement walls? Did you

talk to the foam people about that to see what they said?

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

>

> > I am trying to figure out the best way to do the basement and ground

> floor walls too.. without having holes..

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The furnace is exhausted to the side of house because it is high

efficiency furnace and so much heat is taken out of the fuel, that it

doesn't have enough energy or heat in exhaust to 'rise' out of a

chimney...pretty interesting, huh?

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

>

That weird that they exhaust it on the side of the house.. There

> must not be a lot of exhaust?

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Barb,

No, you misunderstood me. You can't use open cell foam below grade.

As I understand it, open cell foam is very good at preventing air

movement anywhere above grade,

but NOT below-ground-level. Rim joists are okay if they are covered

with walls.

Read this, it explains it all...

http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/digests/bsd-103-understanding-basements\

/?full_view=1

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 5:15 PM, barb1283 <barb1283@...> wrote:

> How could you do basement walls with foam??

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Even if its permitted by code, I wouldn't want that.

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 5:19 PM, barb1283 <barb1283@...> wrote:

> The furnace is exhausted to the side of house because it is high

> efficiency furnace and so much heat is taken out of the fuel, that it

> doesn't have enough energy or heat in exhaust to 'rise' out of a

> chimney...pretty interesting, huh?

>

>

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Well, one doesn't have any choice. If you see in post, I said that

exhaust doesn't have enough heat energy to exhaust up a chimney. It

has to exhaust sideways. It has also burned almost all of the fuel so

there isn't much to exhaust. Even though there isn't much exhaust, I

still don't want a fresh air intake there anymore though but the

location of exhaust is the only way they do it. You can't exhaust it

out a chimney.

> > The furnace is exhausted to the side of house because it is high

> > efficiency furnace and so much heat is taken out of the fuel, that

it

> > doesn't have enough energy or heat in exhaust to 'rise' out of a

> > chimney...pretty interesting, huh?

> >

> >

>

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Okay, now I get it- they feel that it would not rise enough?

I think I need to read up more on this. We were talking with our plumber

about these kinds of appliances the other day and at some point we

are probably going to get something along those lines..

But I don't want to do it exactly that way.

Do you ever smell anything coming in your windows? I like to have cross-

ventilation when the weather is nice out, not being able to open any window I

wanted would bug me.

We would probably do something different.

At this point I am not afraid to get a bunch of opinions. We started

out with people giving us

funny looks but now we are on a first name basis with our local code officials.

They can see that we are putting a lot of energy into researching

things and doing them right.

Living in a small town sometimes has advantages..

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 11:33 PM, barb1283 <barb1283@...> wrote:

> but the

> location of exhaust is the only way they do it. You can't exhaust it

> out a chimney.

>

>

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Out the side of basement was only place they said they could place it.

I was concerned but when weather is nice, furnace shouldn't kick on so

shouldn't be a problem unless you open windows near that area on days

pretty cool.

I did have to shut my fresh air return though which was close to

there.

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

>

>Do you ever smell anything coming in your windows? I like to have

cross-

> ventilation when the weather is nice out, not being able to open any

window I

> wanted would bug me.

>

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