utahprout

we just bought a fixer upper, the basement has been framed tight to exterior walls and there is no insulation between the two. there is also no barrier between the bottom plate and the floor. with the amount of snow we get here what would be the best solution to insulated this 1400 sq foot area?

nealtw

Welcome to the site. Wood should never touch concrete wall or floor. The practice today is to build a 2x4 wall 1 inch away from the concrete wall with something between the bottom plate and the concrete to stop moisture from wicking up. Insulate that wall and vapour barrier behind drywall.

utahprout

thanks, that's what i thought as well, the other problem is there is a load barring wall running the length of the basement that doesn't have the barrier below the bottom plate either. is there a safe way to shore it up while i year down sections of the wall to put it in correctly?

nealtw

Where that wall is supporting just the floor upstairs you can build a temp wall right beside it with studs a little longer tapped into place, will just lift that wall off the floor. Where there is more weight on the wall you may have to do a wall on both sides, depending on the weight it could get tricky. You don't want to break the concrete. You might want to just cut out a peice of the bottom plate and make sure you don't have something under it like tar paper.

utahprout

thanks, the more i read and the more i see they slapped this house together, the shingles didn't even have paper underneath. i think its safe to say the wall downstairs isn't any better

nealtw

When our inspectors or engineers find old constuction with nothing between wood and concrete they call for Paint on treatment like treated lumber has.

Wuzzat?

I've seen graphs of basement wall temp vs. depth.
If your frost line is not that deep it may not pay to insulate (over a 10 year 'investment horizon').

nealtw

It's not just frost, you want to keep the bottom of the wall cold if you can as water will try to find it's way to the warm side.
http://www.fab-form.com/fastfoot/fastfootRisingDamp.php