On 10/29/2016 9:29 PM, songbird wrote:
George Shirley wrote:
...
What exactly are we foaming?

some hard to reach spots above
closets along the outer wall that should
have been sealed up and finished 20yrs
ago when the place was built. in two of
them i'd plugged them up by stuffing old
t-shirts in there to keep air flow down.
surprised by how well those old shirts
held up for that long. i thought they'd
have been chewed up by bugs or mice.
nope. so they got a third use today as
i used them to dust 20yrs of dust up and
finally threw them away.

a few winters ago i could feel drafts
through this room from various leaks in
the walls. since then i've gone around
the outside perimeter and caulked and
foamed shut all the gaps down low and in
the siding which. last winter i didn't
notice the drafts any more so that was
nice. still get plenty of air flow
though with forced air heat/AC.

these three spots were the last of
the sealing up i wanted to do this fall.
i still have some caulking to do and
the garden shed (which is the back wall
of the garage) needs work to seal it up.
the mice get in the walls too easily
there.

in my room here i had to duck tape
three foam can tubes together to get
them to reach to the back wall. it
would have been very hard to crawl up
in there to get to them, but luckily
the extended straw trick worked well
enough.

i figure a three to five year payback
on this project. mostly it was just to
keep bugs from crawling through and any
heat savings is a bonus.


It's fairly nice here at 1442 hours, light
breeze blowing, which is helpful. I started Tilly's fall brushing
yesterday, so far a plastic bag full of dog hair has come off her. Once
it is all off, that which doesn't blow across the garden with the wind,
will be buried around one of the fruit trees. A good source of nitrogen
with a little work. I think I saw fall peaking in on us last night but
I'm not 100% sure yet.

we've had about a dozen hard frosts
so far and some snow, but today was 67F.
not too bad yet. trees are losing
the leaves. been raining a fair bit so
i still have gardens to finish up and
also beets to pick and put up.


songbird

Down here in upper Hell, that's the heat part, we tend to really use a
lot of insulation. Our house is brick exterior with Hardy Plank for
trim. The next layer in is a 3/4 inch insulation board, then the
exterior walls are stuffed with insulation, then there is half inch
sheet rock on the interior. We seldom here cars going by on the street
in front, don't hear many of the aircraft that go by as we have two
airports nearby. Then there's the attic, 12-inch ceiling joists and the
attic has insulation that stands above the joists. The inside of the
roof has reflective plastic on that helps in keeping the outside heat
from penetrating into the attic. Unfortunately we all, by HOA rules,
have black roofs. Always before we had roofs that were white, to reflect
the heat.

We don't really need insulation much against cold, it was 84F yesterday
and may be more today. We haven't had a real winter with cold in over
two years. We get temps running from mid-fifties to high eighties during
the day here in La La Land. The biggest noise around is traffic going
by. From about 0600 to 0930 there is a continuous stream of cars and
trucks going by, then we can get out and go somewhere if necessary. This
includes weekends too, traffic does slow down a bit on Sunday's but not
a lot. You get used to the traffic sounds so you sleep well after
indoctrination. Our home is two blocks from the main road but we still
hear the noise. Then there's six trains a day, tracks are five miles
away but the trains blow their whistles continuously as they go by due
to the crossings. Some of these trains are five or six miles long too.
I'm so old I can remember when this area was cattle and vegetable farms
and you seldom saw a car or heard a train. Most of the trains are
outgoing from the Port of Houston and are pulling automobile carriers,
two levels high. I think the port in Houston must deliver cars for most
of the south from what I've seen going by.

Still, at least the neighbors are quiet, most of them are off to work
before 0800 and the kids are off to school or to the nanny. Peace and
quiet to work in the garden, get the mowing done.*It appears that most
of our neighbors have mowing crews in every other week. Our lawns are
very small and we mow with an electric mower and it takes less than an
hour to mow and weed eat and that includes frequent rests due to our
ages. Wife likes to mow so I'm trying to talk her into getting paid by
the neighbors instead of using wet back labor from off the street. She
would rather play with the gardens. G