There are two pressing problems with our existing building that are typical issues with many older homes – the windows and the insulation.

Although the exterior walls have cutting edge insulation for their time, there have been vast improvements on how the insulation meets the windows. In our home, the windows are set into exterior foam insulation, with a small flange that covers the insulation. This and the tongue and grove on the edges of the insulation is meant to keep water from getting into the wall cavity and the window. In normal rain conditions, this works fine, but if there is any wind with the rain, the water is able to penetrate around the window and insulation. As a result, a number of the window frames and part of our sill plate is starting to rot out from excess water.

In addition, since 1970 we have increased the standards that are used for insulation. Our walls are actually ok, but the roof is very under-insulated for our Wisconsin winters. This was a greater challenge because we have cathedral ceilings with no attic, making adding insulation hard. In severe winters, there is one corner of our house that gets ice build up and water will actually run down our wall into the window well.

So as part of our remodel, we are tackling both of these issues.

The siding is in poor shape, so we are removing it to add an additional inch of insulation to the whole exterior. More importantly, all the seams and windows will be taped to ensure no rain can penetrate the insulation. This will give the building better air sealing as well as lower our energy use.

For the ceiling, we have been exploring two solutions. One is to use two layers of foam insulation and then re-roof on top of the improved insulation. The second is to use Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS), which we are using for the addition roof. SIPs is a layer of insulation sandwiched between two sheets of Oriented Strand Board. The SIPS are ordered to size and for our roof they would have to be put into place by crane. The advantage in our project for using SIPS is they would allow us to put them in quickly which means less labor. In addition, we don’t have to worry about the quality of our roof deck material. The downside, is there is slightly higher costs to SIPS than the more traditional insulation. Stay tuned for more on this project.