A Guide To Insulating Old Homes For HOT HUMID Climates (Part 1) | Floors, Foundations & Walls 

*A Guide To Moisture Management For Residential Remodels eBook:* asiri-designs.com/shop/ols/products/moisture-management-for-residential-remodels

Thanks for the videos. I'm a newly licensed builder after spending years renovating and flipping. Joe Lstiebrek, Matt Risinger, and videos like this have been a big part of me wanting to build my own simple and efficient "building science forward" houses.

Would love to see a similar video for Old Homes in Hot Dry climates. Not too many RU-vid videos on that.

Thanks. I am newly subscribed. We are looking to buy two houses in Melbourne Australia. We can only afford older dooer uppers so this is important information that we need. I am taking the time to learn as much as possible. Long way to go though!

Absolutely amazing videos. Love the content

Great explanation about issues with vapor going in from outside in such weather.

Thank you for this video. I’m currently in design phase of an air-conditioned out building, in Georgia, and you confirmed my plans on using zip system, rockwool, no vapor barrier. Can’t wait to see pt 2. I will also be doing an addition to an existing home as well so it’ll come in handy there too.

Excellent once again. You mentioned benefits of thermal inertia in a topping slab - are there ways to have a workable mix that is designed to increase thermal conductivity? I know that much of the thermal mass of deeper slabs don't help to dampen diurnal temperature swings because its thermal effusivity isn't high enough - the heat can't conduct fast enough to the whole mass in time. An underfloor cooling system could make this mass "reactive" enough, and with passive house loads the temp delta can be low enough to avoid surface condensation risk. It's part of the whole thermal mass debate which dominated passive house for so long, and is still talked about regularly in countries with mass wall construction. With a need to avoid high embodied carbon and energy materials such a concrete, it would probably be best to avoid more massive materials moving forward.

At 9:30, what “nasty things about spray foam” are you referring to? GWP, Shrinkage, or something else?

Great video, thank you. For the brick veneer retrofit, what high permeability air barrier would you consider for the interior? Would a smart membrane work or does that not reach high enough permeability?

Great guide, thank you! What are you thoughts on the "perfect wall" by Joe Lstiburek? It would be great to compare and contrast your take on the water, air, vapor and thermal controls.

What vapor permeable flooring options would you recommend?

I hope we can interest some thermal heat transfer engineers in looking at our wall assemblies. My thought is that a high specific heat material such as cement board will absorb all the radiant heat energy from the sun and, if a large enough air gap exists behind it, one that allows for good exterior airflow, the heat from the cement board can be dissipated back into the outside air and released. Assuming the temperature of the cement board is higher than the air temperature of course, but one would expect that on long hot summer days the sun facing side of the house would be significantly hotter. The insight missing in all the insulation discussions I hear is that on the sun facing side we have a strong heat transfer source, solar radiation, which is mostly infrared and ultraviolet, that travels through a vacuum until absorbed in the outer skin of the building. Having the cement board in contact with the house provided a conduction pathway. Insulation there reduces the conduction heat transfer, but it also provides a pathway for that to occur. An open space, of the sort these new rain screen assemblies provide, allows convection heat transfer, yes, but I’m guessing that convective heat transfer is much less efficient than conductive and, if that air can escape - hopefully not into the attic, then the heat load behind it can be mitigated in that way too. True, the cement board, the same as all other materials, when heated will emit black body radiation commensurate with its temperature, but that is emitted in both directions anyway, and I doubt that it amounts to very much heat transfer back into the building. Heat transfer from the exterior sheathing through the walls would be conductive at that point, but all your wall insulation would be in place to attenuate that. You could add a reflective surface behind the cement board, but that’s probably getting to be like a NASA project at that point. Well, my idea for you. It would be fascinating to see some computer modeling of the radiative heat transfer to a house and then modeling to look at possible ways to mitigate it. There are more sophisticated ways of calculation insulation from heat transfer than just adding R-values. You could say that if the rain screen provides a raincoat, it also provides a parasol. Maybe my thesis is flawed in some ways, but there is something here very much worth exploring.

Could you make a video for Cold Wet climate also? Here in Norway we rarely have more than 4 weeks where it is the same or higher outside temperature than innside

What about smart paper barrier from the inside on the sheathing? And then some mineral wool insulation. In mixed climates? This is a brick veneer 🧱

Assuming the assembly is airtight, watertight, and R-value is the same for a CMU wall, does it matter if the insulation is in the exterior or interior in hot humid climates?

In south, stucco over cynder block? Any barriers?

So, all examples shown here seem to assume that you’re tearing everything all the way down to the studs and ripping up all flooring. You could probably build a new house for less than a renovation like that.

Addressing your comment about spray foam, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1TuRK3CI7jc.htmlsi=NCrdYTap1V80W3c4&t=558, is that only in the crawlspace application or general use of closed cell spray foam?

@13:00 - I am not at all a fan of polyisocyanate insulation. The key is the string “cyan” in the name. That says to me that it’s related to cyanide, and I don’t want something in my walls that could easily turn into a poison if it catches on fire. Rockwool, yes. Fiberglass, maybe. Polyiso? No.

Buldozer. The only solution for plywood palaces.