Spray foam insulation and moisture

[OldShooter]

True - but the reason for the HRV being installaed is because your house is much more energy efficient thereby reducing the $$ spent on heating and cooling the unconditioned air leaking into your home.

Not sure what your point is. Whatever was done in the house is sunk cost and therefore irrelevant to decisions going forward. A dollar wasted is a dollar wasted regardless of history or other circumstances.

Yes but if you have built a really "tight house" you need to have proper ventilation. ...

As I said, we'll see how this goes and what we need to do with the air exchange gadget. With only two people in the house and living there only part time I am certain that it does not have to be left running unconditionally.

If you can afford 2 houses, surely you can afford healthy air. ...

We can afford whatever we want, mostly because we have paid attention to costs for our whole adult lives. Whether spending more money will give us "healthy air" (whatever that is) remains to be seen.

@teetee, sorry that the thread got hijacked. That was not my intention when telling you about the insulation our GC used.

 

[NgineER]

Not sure what your point is. Whatever was done in the house is sunk cost and therefore irrelevant to decisions going forward. A dollar wasted is a dollar wasted regardless of history or other circumstances.

I agree, a wasted dollar is a wasted dollar. But your investment or sunk cost in your energy efficient house resulted in lower running cost/expenses.

Did you not read the prospectus or understand your investment when you decided to go down the path of a tight, high performing house?

 

[pb4uski]

...
Per code, we do have an air exchange box. (https://www.lifebreath.com/wp-conte...MAX-Specification-sheet-01-01-18-1.pdf?x19032) The HVAC guy said to not worry about it too much, but to turn in on when humidity is high enough to condense on the windows in winter and any time there are odors/cooking that we want to get rid of. There is a wall control box next to the thermostat.

Maybe something like this would work for you?

Our air exchanger has 3 settings as I recall... off, on and 20 min an hour. We usually leave it off until we see a little condensation in the corner of the windows, then turn it on and then to the 20 min setting once the condensation is gone.

 

[finnski1]

Not sure what your point is. Whatever was done in the house is sunk cost and therefore irrelevant to decisions going forward. A dollar wasted is a dollar wasted regardless of history or other circumstances.

As I said, we'll see how this goes and what we need to do with the air exchange gadget. With only two people in the house and living there only part time I am certain that it does not have to be left running unconditionally.

We can afford whatever we want, mostly because we have paid attention to costs for our whole adult lives. Whether spending more money will give us "healthy air" (whatever that is) remains to be seen.

@teetee, sorry that the thread got hijacked. That was not my intention when telling you about the insulation our GC used.

Hah. I know you can afford it easily. Was just being a little cheeky. Hence the smile emoji.
I was serious though about the fresh air exchange in tight houses. Looks like you've got that covered.
Look to articles such as this for what "healthy " air means.
https://www.buildwithrise.com/stories/hrvs-ervs-for-passive-house
Although it references Passive Haus standards which are incredibly stringent for air tightness, any tight house can benefit from proper ventilation.

 

[teetee]

Not sure what your point is. Whatever was done in the house is sunk cost and therefore irrelevant to decisions going forward. A dollar wasted is a dollar wasted regardless of history or other circumstances.


...


@teetee, sorry that the thread got hijacked. That was not my intention when telling you about the insulation our GC used.

It's all good. More knowledge and perspective help in most cases.



Happy Holidays everyone!

 

[mpeirce]

Some recent experience with foam insulation.

When we renovated our lakehouse we replaced the old fiberglass insulation with open cell foam. The place was stripped to the studs so it’s wasn’t a big hassle to do it.

Yesterday we lost power during the big storm. The power was off for about 10 hours. Outside it was a couple of degrees below zero with 35-55 mph winds.

Inside it went from 70° to a low of 51° downstairs and 53° upstairs.

This place also has lots of windows - walls of windows facing the lake. They’re double pane, plus they have duet blinds which help a bit.

We were pretty happy with performance of the house. It got chilly, but it didn’t plunge.

Of course we were very happy when the power came back on!

YMMV