Insulating the Gaps

I started to insulate the joist gaps between the floors (from the basement). First up was the wall in the laundry room that neighbors the garage. I went to visit my best friend (Home Depot) and bought a 2" thick 4' x 8' Rigid Foam Insulation board. My friend was nice enough to cut it into 2' sections so I could fit it in my car. I measured the space to fit in the joist space and rough fit them first, then I used some construction adhesive (safe for foam board) to stick the boards in place. I made sure to leave a little gap all the way around for the spray foam to fill.

Space before foam...

And after, glued in place.

The insulation, as you can see, has an R-10 value - so it's a decent amount of protection from the elements. The Owens Corning stuff has the best rating too for 2" - although the DOW stuff at Lowe's has the same R value, for some reason it's almost double the price. If I wanted to go overboard, I could add a double layer in too, but that's probably overkill for the particular application.

So, using about 2 cans of "great stuff" expandable foam, all the cracks around the insulation are sealed, and also the gaps between the foundation wall and the sill plate.

Helpful tip. Don't be dumb like me - wear gloves.

All done. Should keep those ants and anything else out, too (including air).

Wall Destruction

I've had to tear down a wall of drywall in my laundry room for a while now, so that I could get to the dryer vent that had completely disconnected inside the wall. While doing that, I tore down the adjoining wall so that I could add insulation within the exterior wall, and the joist space between the floors. I started ripping out the wall and discovered a nice little surprise.

Luckily the ants were long gone, but cleanup was certainly fun. It was good that the only wood they'd eaten was just furring strips too. It was interesting to find that the previous owners had installed some foam board within the wall too, because it's not in any other basement walls.

Here's a closer look at one of the furring strips that they turned into cardboard.

Networking Distraction

Finished running cat6 network cable through most of the house this weekend. I ran all the cables from the basement underneath the stairs to each room. In order to do this, I drilled several holes up through the basement, into the wall cavity of one room - then matched that up by drilling from the attic through the top of the stud wall. Then by using fish-tape I could pull the cat6 (and some tv cable) from the basement into the attic, then feed it from there into other rooms by drilling into the wall studs and fishing the cable through the walls. I'd have pictures of what it was like in the attic, but I never want to go up there ever again...
Here's a shot of the patch panel and the 16 port switch I used to connect up all the rooms. I added in some some 6" square blocks to step it down so I could attach the metal rack too.

Here's a view looking up from the basement to where I had to drill the holes to run the cables. And then  a look at the finished product in one of the rooms.

Had to drill two holes, as one couldn't contain them all.

Just a single. Living room has 4 cat6 and 1 coax.