Insulation, Code, and “Close In” Permits (Reno Tales: Part 5)

I got my green tag on my electrical rough-in and got permission to “close in” six days after I started. It doesn’t look like much, but this little baby’s the result of about 80 hours of hard labor…

(If you’re doing a renovation with a general contractor, and you don’t see a series of these below your permit as the job progresses, you should ask a lot of questions.)

The “OK to cover up” means that I’ve got permission after this to put insulation over the electrical work I did. The purpose of this inspection was to make sure that I used the right wire and gauge of wire, that I stapled it properly and ran it into the box properly, and that it was connected properly in any junction boxes in the ceiling. The inspector wanted to know where each and every wire went, if I had used grounding screws on the junction boxes I had added to the attic, and if I’d used non-metallic boxes or approved romex grommets where I did use metallic boxes.

Any circuits that you alter while you are doing work are required to be brought up to code. That means that if you tie into, reroute, add wire to, or remove wire from an existing circuit, the whole circuit needs to be brought up to the current code: GFCI outlets or protected circuits in wet areas, arc fault breakers in circuits that run through bedrooms, confirm the # of devices on a circuit… the whole nine yards.

I also installed wired smoke alarms. To pass inspection, I didn’t NEED to, but it was highly suggested that I do so. Code in my area if I were to rent the house requires that there be a wired smoke alarm in each bedroom (defined as an enclosed room with a closet and a window), and a combination wired smoke alarm / carbon monoxide detector in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Since I do plan to rent at least a room out at some point, I went ahead and installed them so that I’d get it all done at once.

Honestly, I lost the most time through ALL of this to using cheap wire nuts. Beige IDEAL wire nuts work great. Yellow/orange Buchanan ones are crap.

I will need another green tag after completing the insulation, before I can put drywall up.

Insulation. First thing: It’s itchy. Second thing is that it’s a pain in the butt to get it in if you’re installing the batts yourself. Third thing is: At least you can install it yourself without paying the cost per cubic inch that spray foam gets. I did spray foam some small areas.

Fiberglass batts are a decent way to DIY install insulation. Spray foam costs about four times the cost (installed) as fiberglass (installed) — and DIY is even cheaper with fiberglass, as the spray foam DIY kits are almost equal the installed cost according to the quotes I got.

The inspector and I spent about thirty minutes talking when he was there the first time (I think he wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing and wasn’t trying to hide anything), and he walked me through the next step. He said that I definitely needed a minimum of R-30 to replace the attic insulation (which was R-11 before) and R-13 on exterior walls since I had 2×4 framed studs. I’d need R-19 if I had 2×6 framing, but that’s uncommon in the south.

In the cold roof, which is 2×8, he said that the code calls for R-19 — but he suggested (in a very official voice) that I fit R-30 in there and sacrifice a little bit of R value from compressing it. The R-30 fit, but it was very difficult to get up into the flat roof and to staple in place.

It did make it a bit worse that some of the framing was not square, which made the individual bays farther than 23″ across — to the point where I had to put some dead wood in there on the sides of the rafters to get the 23″ wide can light arms to attach. That particular rafter was really bad. It was 13 degrees out.

Why not fix it? Can’t. Fixing it would mean removing the roof decking, or at least detaching that rafter from the roof. That would probably bust a hole in the roof. Since I didn’t feel like adding an entirely new roof to the tab…

You will notice that we stapled the insulation to the face of the studs and rafters instead of inside the studs and rafters. That’s because the kraft paper is a vapor barrier. Most builders and installers won’t do this. It’s time consuming and it makes installing the drywall a pain in the butt because you can’t see where the studs are. Contiguous vapor barriers are sort of a damnyankee northern thing that you have to do when you’ve got a lot more heating days than cooling days… however, they’re there for your protection, and in this case, could be the difference between this insulation getting moldy again and not.

So, last but not least, what I learned while hanging the insulation…

First, use a sharp utility knife that you can swap blades out of quickly but that doesn’t have a lot of other crap on it to get hung in the insulation.

Second, Arrow makes great staples (and their staples are standard), but they can’t make a staple gun worth a crap. BOTH of the electric Arrow-branded staple guns (ET501, ETFX50) that we bought when we start jammed continuously and failed under use. The ET501 actually stopped working due to overheating. What ended up working DECENTLY well was an Power Shot Pro gun that I found at Home Depot. Apparently these are made by Arrow, but aren’t listed on the website…

Third, you need to know what’s behind the insulation that you’re putting in. The R-30 insulation is a full 10 1/4 inches deep when it’s inflated — that’s close to the size of a 2×12. If there’s nothing behind it and you’re applying R-30 to a wall facing an attic, then you need to strap behind it. (I used spring steel hangers in some places and stapled straps in others depending on what I was doing and how much access to the backside I had.) If there’s wall behind there, or electrical, or worst of all water pipes, you need to separate the layers of insulation so that you’re insulating around those things.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk a bit about ventilation and how that works with the insulation in the cold roof… Or I’ll share some more pictures. Need some time to make diagrams, and I’m spending my day off today taping and floating…