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Moisture Control
Properly controlling moisture in your home will improve the effectiveness of your air sealing and insulation efforts, and vice versa. Thus, moisture control contributes to a home's overall energy efficiency.
The best strategy for controlling moisture in your home depends on your climate and how your home is constructed. Before deciding on a moisture control strategy for your home, you may first want to understand how moisture moves through a home.
Moisture control strategies typically include the following areas of a home:
• Attics
• Foundation
o Basement
o Crawl space
o Slab-on-grade floors
• Walls.
In most U.S. climates, you can use vapor diffusion retarders in these areas of your home to control moisture.
Proper ventilation should also be part of a moisture control strategy.
Moisture Control in Basements
To effectively insulate your basement for energy efficiency and to create a comfortable space, you need to properly control moisture in your basement.
Most basement water leakage results from either bulk moisture leaks or capillary action. Bulk moisture is the flow of water through holes, cracks, and other discontinuities into the home's basement walls. Capillary action occurs when water wicks into the cracks and pores of porous building materials, such as masonry blocks, concrete, or wood. These tiny cracks and pores can absorb water in any direction—even upward.
The best approaches for preventing these problems will depend on your local climate, type of insulation, and style of construction. However, the following general rules apply to most basement designs for creating a water-managed foundation system (see corresponding illustration):
1. Keep all untreated wood materials away from earth contact.
2. Provide drainage, such as gutters, to conduct rainwater away from the house.
3. Slope the earth away from all sides of the house for at least 5 feet at a minimum 5% grade (3 inches in 5 feet). Establish drainage swales to direct rainwater around.
4. Add a sill gasket to provide air sealing.
5. Install a protective membrane, such as caulked metal flashing or EPDM-type membrane, to serve as a capillary break that reduces wicking of water up from the masonry foundation wall. This membrane can also serve as a termite shield on top of foam board insulation.
6. Damp-proof all below-grade portions of the foundation wall and footing to prevent the wall from absorbing ground moisture by capillary action.
7. Place a continuous drainage plane over the damp-proofing or exterior insulation to channel water to the foundation drain and relieve hydrostatic pressure. Drainage plane materials include special drainage mats, high-density fiberglass insulation products, and washed gravel. All drainage planes should be protected with a filter fabric to prevent dirt from clogging the intentional gaps in the drainage material.
8. Install a foundation drain directly below the drainage plane and besides the footing, not on top of the footing. This prevents water from flowing against the seam between the footing and the foundation wall. Surround a perforated 4-inch plastic drainpipe with gravel and wrap both with filter fabric.
9. Underneath the basement's slab floor, install a capillary break and vapor diffusion retarder, consisting of a layer of 6- to 10-mil polyethylene over at least 4 inches of gravel.
Consult a qualified builder, basement designer, and/or insulation contractor in your area for specific basement moisture control measures concerning your climate, type of insulation, and construction style.
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Sealing Ductwork
A duct system that is well-designed and properly sealed can make your home more comfortable, energy efficient, and safer. Here are some reasons why duct improvements can be a wise investment:
Sealing and insulating ducts can help with common comfort problems, such as rooms that are too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter.
Indoor Air Quality
Fumes from household and garden chemicals, insulation particles, and dust can enter your duct system, aggravating asthma and allergy problems. Sealing ducts can help improve indoor air quality by reducing the risk of pollutants entering ducts and circulating through your home.
During normal operation, gas appliances such as water heaters, clothes dryers, and furnaces release combustion gases (like carbon monoxide) through their ventilation systems. Leaky ductwork in your heating and cooling system may cause “back drafting,” where these gases are drawn back into the living space, rather than expelled to the outdoors. Sealing leaks can minimize this risk.
Leaky ducts can reduce heating and cooling system efficiency by as much as 20 percent. Sealing and insulating ducts increases efficiency, lowers your energy bills, and can often pay for itself in energy savings. Plus, if you’re planning to install new heating and cooling equipment, a well-designed and sealed duct system may allow you to downsize to a smaller, less costly heating and cooling system that will provide better dehumidification.
Energy used in our homes often comes from the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, which contributes to smog, acid rain, and global warming. Simply put, the less energy we use in our homes, the less air pollution we generate. By sealing your ducts and reducing the amount of energy necessary to comfortably heat or cool your home, you can reduce the amount of air pollution generated.
If you decide to seal your ductwork here are some key steps you should follow:..........
If you would like to read more, please use the “BuyNow” button below and you will gain an in instant access to the tenth chapter of my new book dedicated to the energy conservation issues!
In the chapter, you will learn how to properly seal the ductwork, what kind of tool to use and where the sealant should be applied.
The chapter has 2 pages and 3 pictures in it. Price of the chapter is only $1.34.
More info and tne vidio added. (06/26/10).
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Moisture Control in Walls
It is a myth that installing vapor barriers is the most important step for controlling moisture in walls. Vapor barriers only retard moisture due to diffusion, while most moisture enters walls either through fluid capillary action or as water vapor through air leaks.
All climates require these moisture control steps:
 • Install a polyethylene ground cover on the earth floor of houses with crawl spaces and slope the ground away from the foundations of all houses.
• Install a continuous vapor barrier, if your climate needs one (see map on this page) that has a perm rating of less than one.
• Place a termite shield, sill gaskets, or other vapor-impermeable membrane on the top of the foundation wall. This action will prevent moisture from wicking into the framed wall from the concrete foundation wall by capillary action.
Preventing Rain Penetration
Causes of rain leaks through exterior walls include improper installation of the following:
• Siding materials
• Poor-quality flashing
• Weather-stripping or caulking around joints in the building exterior (such as windows, doors, and bottom plates).
Wind-driven rain can also penetrate the exterior finish.
To enhance protection against rain penetration, create a drainage plane within the wall system of the home.
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Ductwork Insulation
There is some interest in the duct insulating among visitors of my website, it is why I decided to make this page.
Insulation of your system of ductwork maybe necessary to do if you keep all supply registers in your basement closed and as a result, it is very cold down there. Otherwise, it is considered as a conditioned space and does not required any insulation, but of course, there are some temperature losses and if you want to have a perfect system of ductwork, it would be better to insulate!
In addition, if you are finishing you basement off you may decide to do duct insulation in order to reduce a temperature drop in your ductwork also.
If your ductwork is located in the crawl space then, according to the Michigan code you have two options:
- Insulate walls only; it will make a conditioned space
- Insulate ductwork only, no conditioned space
However, according to the same code the crawl space requires to have a few vents, which ultimately turns a conditioned space in the unconditioned one! Therefore, I would be recommending insulating the ductwork anyway.
Materials:
R4 Duct Wrap Insulation Sleeve Insulation
R13 Wall Insulation “Silver” Tape
Staples
Tools:
Utility Knife Tape Measure
PC4000 - Heavy-Duty PowerCrown™ Tacker Templates
Before insulating, seal all the gaps around drive, pipe connections and Take-offs. The best stuff for the duct seal are special mastics or duct sealants. Do not use aluminum tape – it will not stick to old ductwork because they are covered with dust..........
Use "Buy Now" button below, pay $2.50 and get to the page instantly!
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