DIY Network

Hi Everyone,

We have a question about getting insulation for our home. We currently live in a house that was probably built in the 1950s. It has a basement, main floor and a second floor (but it's also the attic? sloping ceilings and little "closets" that look like the parts that were not finished because the slope of the ceiling was too low). Our walls are not made of drywall, something more like cement. We live in Michigan, so the weather can get pretty cold and we've been trying to do as much as we can to insulate the house without having to tear down the walls to add new insulation.

I think I saw this show once that showed someone cutting a hole into the wall and injecting some type of foam insulation. Would this be a feasible approach to solving our insulation issues? If it would work, could we do it ourselves?

Spray foam just can't be beat. Upfront costs are higher, but you will get that back in 5 years. If it is just a couple few places then the do-it-yourself kits are good, but doing a whole upstairs is gonna be cheaper if you hire it out. The wall fill kind is a slow rise, low-pressure cavity fill formula. They do that so it doesn't buckle your walls out, or flat out explode them.

Those short walls are called knee walls.
They need to be insulated along the outside walls, but the trouble comes in when the ceiling starts. There needed to be foam baffles installed before the insulation goes in to allow air flow to go up to the top of the roof to escape through a ridge vent. If not the roof over heats and burns up the shingles, and heat transfures down into the room. There was no such thing as foam baffles 20 years or more ago.
And Matt is 100% right even if the foam was cheap to buy (which it's not) there's a very real chance it can do major damage to a home if you do not know what your doing.
If this home also has old style single paned window it's an easy quick job to buy new replacement windows that will start saving you money the day after there installed.