Dense-Packed Cellulose in Basement Ceiling
rhl_
| Posted in General Questions on
Hi,
We are closing up our basement, it has floor heat so we want to install insulation in the floor.
I want to do an over and above job, so i am interested in speccing out dense pack cellulose.
The installer said to put the drywall up we would need to use a product like this:
and i should find an installer with experience doing this.
I’m curious if this is feasible or abnormally harder on a ceiling?
And yes i know that we probably dont need to use dense pack.
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Search and download construction details
Replies
Ryan,
Does filling the joist cavities give you the optimum amount of insulation for a floor separating two conditioned areas?
Dense pack cellulose R 4.0 per inch.
High density fiberglass batts R 4.2 per inch.
Yeah, I don't get dense-pack in this application instead of just batts. Floor joists are typically 10 or 12 inches, you can fit way more insulation than you'll need. R-13 is probably enough, all it's doing is keeping one zone from influencing another too much.
Mice can’t go through the dense pack is the reason.
Not my experience. They tunnel right through it.
Mice can go through dense-packed cellulose. The typical borate additive makes them somewhat averse, and if the density is very high it could help dissuade them. But I rarely see densities that high. I would find another method of pest control. But there's no reason why dense-pack wouldn't work in the ceiling. Here in New England we usually strap ceilings, and I would recommend it for any ceiling. I recently tried skipping the strapping on a dense-packed ceiling finished with wood boards and wish I had taken the extra effort to install strapping.
What do you mean by strapping?
I guess this is kind of overkill your right .
Probably better for maintence to leave a few inches to store pipes etc.
In New England it's customary to run 1x3 or 1x4 strips perpendicular to the joists on a ceiling and attach the drywall to those pieces. Those pieces are called strapping.