Home Improvement

I had a friend growing up and his dad was a builder. He built two pole barns side by side, each probably 40'x80' give or take and had a breezeway between the two. One he turned into his house, and the other side was his shop etc. it was a huge house and awesome craftsmanship and I know the cost was a lot less than a normal stick built house.

Keep in mind that you would also want to put screening under the decking to help prevent insects from climbing up through the bottom. It doesn't have to be installed with the frame type of application shown above. Just buy screen material and screw it into place between each joist. This isn't a "must", but it's very helpful as lots of insects crawl up from below and this will keep them out.

Intrinsic_sl said:

Has anyone used a custom screen provider or a product like Screeneze (SCREENEZE Porch Systems)?

The deck off our master we designed to be turned in to a screened in porch, not really a room that needs covered ceiling and floor per se. And my wife really wants this so would like to do it for Christmas. I can easily install screens because of the uniform way it was built out, just don't know what would be a decent quality product.

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It was 10 years ago, but if you remember our screen porch, I used a similar product. It was a black plastic track you screwed to the posts. A roll of screen, and a rubber tube that held the screen in place. After the screen is up, there was a white(or whatever color) cap that covered the black track. Your link seems to be an upgraded version of that with less steps.

Just be careful of kitty claws

Not a lot has changed. Different house, still flat(ish), still 30 minutes from good stuff, and Farscape is still awesome.

Livin the dream

So I'm working on insulating my garage as I use it for tropical fish. The question to the DIY gods is. How would I go about insulating this scenario.

Basically it would seem that my detached 1500sqft garage was built as two buildings then connected. I think maybe it was a 4 car garage at one point plus an additional 1 car garage. With 1 car space between the two buildings. It looks like they then combined them into one. The problem is there is about different attic heights because of this. And between the two buildings they put in barn doors on one side, so you could drive a car into it if you wanted. Other wall is insulated and sheetrocked etc.

How could I feasibly insulate he barn doors? My fear is that I say, attach rigid pink foam to gain some R value and then just create a point for water to get trapped and mold.

On top of that this middle room has a higher roof with little to no space to insulate above the ceiling. I'm thinking I could make a lower ceiling almost a drop ceiling and then just tie in to the gable vent the one attic already has. As I type this I realize it's really hard to visual and I'll grab some pics tomorrow to help explain.

The goal is to develop a battle plan, get everything set and blow in more insulation as currently the garage has 1 layer of pink batt insulation. In a space where I want to heat it to 80 degrees year round.

Right now I don't heat this barn door space due to me thinking it will just leak way to much heat. I haven't tested that yet, but as it stands it's proving at capacity to keep the main space heated hence why I want more insulation.

What part of the country are you in (just curious how cold it gets, and for how long each year)

Whether you're in Texas or North Dakota could change the answers quite a bit

Consider replacing the barn doors with overhead doors. You can get them already insulated, and they're not so hard to install. Other than that, as much spray insulation as you can do. The foam is awesome for r value, but it has to be enclosed, as it's a fire hazard otherwise.

Ah, I'm in Washington state. Outside temps last night while I was putting fish away in the fish room/garage was about 25 degrees.

I've been doing easy things like sealing around the eletrical outlets on my ceiling and using outlet sealers. Which I'm not claiming will do a lot. I also installed a insulated window quilt on the window in the room with velcro. Put door sweeps in to help protect drafts there. I plan to build a insulated box for the attic access that has stairs next. I already spray foamed around it and used weather stripping on the door itself.

I feel like I don't have time/the money to spray foam garage. As it would require all the insulation being taken out, then foaming in. I'm thinking of getting most bang for my buck with cellulose spray in DIY. While I have the machine I'm going to shoot some more insulation in my attic in the house where we had a wall removed and redid the drywall. Currently there is no insulation there which I'm sure is costing me money every day at this point.

Also I had considered switching the door. I was thinking, why not just install a garage door? But then I thought maybe I can make this thing work with some DIy, if not might prove easier to buy a door.

Kinda got me thinking. Maybe I could just spray foam those barn doors. Not sure how I'd make it look good, although I'm sure there is a way. However rigid foam is an easier install, but much harder to air barrier.

Googling, people recommend reflectix on a garage door. I did this in the past at a rental. Turned out horrible as water just condensed on the garage door and caused mold I had to clean up.

Its kinda like I want it to be able to breath, but not release the heat.

So I got some pics.

So here are the barn doors. Which are apparently carriage doors.


Bottom view of the doors.


Shot of the roof between the spaces I described.


Ridiculously small access panel to get above the smaller rooms. There is pink batt above those rooms. I can't fit in the access to see if the ceiling has it.


Below the access panel.


View of the door between this series of rooms and the heated space.

Interesting about the xps against the slab. I'm going to google that.

So I use a camera to see above the tallest roof point in that access. The good news is there is some insulation. It appears to be a mix of batt where the ceiling was low enough, and styro in other parts.

My question is this. I need to google more, but it would seem I'm not using the right terms. But lets say I made most of the attic space lets say 1200 of 1500sqft R39 or 50 etc. But that part where the attic is tiny and has no room might only be R10. Will the added insulation on the rest of the attic be moot? Like a big gaping hole where all the heat leaves the not as insulated part? OR will it be say without any insulation it costs $100 a month to heat. If I had perfect insulation it would be $50 to heat. But instead with good insulation on most and only partial at that point it'll be $65 to heat.

Thanks for anyone who understands these ramblings and has insight. I'm off to work on insulating that door!

It depends. Is your heat loss based upon radiating through surfaces or airflow of the heated air? I would rent an infrared thermometer, perhaps.

I mean there's ultimately no way around it, for instance single pane windows in a well insulated house below zero will not only bleed heat but even being near them will chill you like death. That doesn't mean you can't heat it, just that it's going to cost more. Of course if your heat register is bleeding out through a gaping hole next to it you might not even be able to without adding more BTUs capacity (or you know, insulating the hole).

What's the reason you can't apply higher r value foam sheeting in that area where you can't blow in or use batting?