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I’m looking for thoughts on this plan. I’d like to slightly improve the insulation in our ceilings and also cover up some hideous acoustic tiling in the process. We also need to improve the lighting in the bedrooms, which is currently a single wall sconce in each room, so we’d like to get some ceiling-mounted lighting going. Our house in 1960’s vintage, with a flat roof (actually a slight slope) and no attic space. Being a southern california tract house, it has zero insulation anywhere. There is no attic space. The roof/ceiling currently is: rolled asphalt roofing over ~3/4” tongue+groove planks with acoustic tiles glued (tested positive for asbestos) to the underside of the roof planks. The tiles are the ceiling treatment on the inside, so it resembles a schoolroom or whatever. It leaks cold air like a sieve around the tops of the walls where the t+g roof planks meet the walls, although this is visibly obscured by the acoustic tiling. In the summers the roof (and walls) soaks up the sun and the rooms quickly hit 80-90F+. There is no AC in the house, but there is forced air heating delivered through soffits. I’m thinking of placing ~2” thick rigid styrofoam board against the acoustic tiles, and then securing the foam with 1x furring strips, using screws sunk upward through the furring, through the foam, through the acoustic tile, and into the roof planking. Then use the furring strips as the basis for attaching 1/2” drywall as the new ceiling treatment. In the process I’m thinking I’d add (4) round pan electrical boxes on the furring strips to provide a way to mount low-profile LED ceiling lights up there. Ideally the styrofoam would act as a radiant barrier and insulating layer to reject some of the heat the roof soaks up during the afternoons. There are also exposed beams running on the ceiling in each room (10”+ depth), so I’m thinking that 2” foam + 3/4” furring + 1/2” drywall will still leave enough beam exposed to not lose that feature.  I’ve read varying opinions about the danger of creating a mold+fungus farm and the necessity for vapor barriers (or not) when adding insulation into existing structures. Much of that advice seems tilted toward houses in places with actual cold weather and the potential for condensation against the underside of a cold roof in winter. That ought to be less of an issue in coastal SoCal, but I’m still casting around for opinions on that topic. If the styrofoam plan isn’t a complete non-starter, would you approach the attachment and drywalling strategy in a different way?
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Apr 18, 2021 04:10
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:39 |
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cakesmith handyman posted:I won't comment too much because vapour barriers etc are complicated but I will say please don't use styrofoam as it's horribly flammable. Although more expensive there are better insulation foams available. That's worth discussing. I was envisioning the 4x8 sheets of polystyrene or poly-iso with radiant foil on one face. I guess it's mainly used for insulating foundations, and maybe it's inappropriate for interior usage? If the rigid foam sheets aren't feasible, am I stuck using some floppy fiberglas or rockwool batts? His Divine Shadow posted:There is also insulation that does not really require a vapor barrier. I am mostly working from using rockwool which is most common here, most of the main insulation here goes bad when it goes wet. Vapor barriers are important for that, though they seal up the house so well that you need to compensate with ventilation. So there are options here, I am not an expert on what is most available in california. We're effectively a desert, so prolonged high humidity inside is less of an issue. I don't see much vapor barrier used here on interior spaces, just exterior housewraps. For whatever it's worth, I can also add that our bathrooms had drop ceilings added at some point, and the cavity above the ceiling panels has stayed mold-free for decades. The bathrooms only have exterior windows, no exhaust fans, but the accumulated steam from showers hasn't caused any issues.
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Apr 18, 2021 15:34
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Are there some clear tiers of cheap, mid-range, top end when it comes to brands for doors and windows? I specifically looking at getting a 6' wide double french door set (outward swing, right hand side if it matters) to put in a "modern" looking outbuilding. Our place has JeldWen vinyl windows retrofitted in the main house and I'm completely unimpressed with the quality, especially the latches, but maybe their doors are sufficient for this backyard building that won't get constant traffic.
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Aug 3, 2021 03:39
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We have a tankless gas Noritz NR71-SV and the comments about taking 30 seconds to heat up made me go and measure ours. Ours has to run through galvanized+copper through the concrete slab, and at the kitchen tap, roughly 30ft from the heater, it takes 1:15 to go from a starting temperature of 68F to stabilize at 111F (heater set to 120F). The temperature basically doesn't move for the first 30 seconds while it clears out the cooled water in the line. In the bathrooms about 10 ft from the heater it takes about 45 seconds to hit full temperature at the tap. These are California low-flow faucets, probably 1.2gpm in the baths and 1.8gpm in the kitchen. I'm not a particular fan of the unit, which came with the house when we moved in, since it requires a minimum flow of 0.4gpm to trigger the heater and keep it running, and if I want a medium-temperature shower I have to also run the sink faucet to create enough hot water flow to keep the heater on when I adjust the shower down to the desired temperature. It does make endless hot water, but at our water prices we can't afford to be taking endless showers.
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Jun 3, 2023 19:36
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If you’re looking for just a cooktop (hob) with knobs, we’ve been very happy with our Frigidaire unit for the last two years: https://www.frigidaire.com/en/p/kitchen/cooktops/induction-cooktops/FPIC3077RF I think we paid $1500 out the door with tax etc. It has similar limitations as the poster above mentioned, only one burner per side can be at max boiling power at a time, but all four burners can run simultaneously at settings lower than max power, which is probably where you’ll be most of the time. I actively avoided any of the brands with touch controls. You can twiddle these knobs with wet hands and drip water everywhere and the cooktop doesn’t randomly register that as button presses or decide to shut down.
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Jul 20, 2023 05:02
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D-Pad posted:So new house has tankless water heaters. Two of them actually and we aren't really sure why they put two in instead of just one. Anyway when taking a shower the water gets hot for about 45 seconds then will slowly go to lukewarm or even cold for a little while then go back to hot and repeat despite the handle never being moved. Any ideas what's causing this? We have the same issue. It seems to be an issue of your desired temperature at the shower valve leading to a slow enough flow rate of hot water that the heater turns itself off because it drops below the minimum gallons-per-minute flow threshold that the heater needs to remain on. Our extremely dumb solution is to leave the bathroom sink hot water tap slightly open while showering. Then between the sink and the shower we’re using enough hot water volume to keep the heater constantly on and get a stable temperature in the shower. It’s my least favorite aspect of this tankless heater that we inherited with the house. It’s probably exacerbated by having a low-flow shower head in our shower.
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Mar 3, 2024 00:36
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 14:39 |
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Qwijib0 posted:We ended up just buying the shower controller for our rinnai (bc100v) and then just setting the hot temp at what we wanted then only opening the hot tap. Don't know why we waited so long to do it, perfect shower temp every time, no hot/cold tap fiddling. I had no idea such a thing existed. But it doesn't seem to exist for our Noritz heater, so that's a pisser.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:56
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