Atlantic Xpat

In keeping with the general 'winters a' coming'/'heating your house' theme of late, does anyone have any advice or opinion on how to best insulate a basement furnace/boiler/machinery room? Our basement is fully finished aside from this room where the fiery beast lurks. (along with the water softener, well pressure tank and electrical panel.) Common sense dictates that whatever insulation should be heat/fire proof - at least around the flue!

There is much pipework/wiring running up the wall so building a conventional 2 x 4 insulated wall might be a little challenging but not impossible. Sprayfoam might be an answer but its probably too small a job to be economical. (Room is about 10 by 4ft with two external walls.) Or is it just not worthwhile worrying about at all?

A couple of pics attached to illustrate the point.

AX

Tuppence

I haven't got a useful answer for you, but I'm interested in any replies, as we have exactly the same situation as you.

Many congrats on the pregnancy (your wife not you, obviously ).

JonboyE

I don't think I've ever seen an insulated furnace room - though we do get a different climate here. I would have thought the best return on your dollar would be to insulate all the hot water pipes. Home depot sell pre-formed foam insulation that you just push on the pipes.

livermanl

On second look the only complication seems to be the electrical panel which once that gets moved you put put a frame up insulate (i wouldn't spary) and drywall and reattach the panel.

As for the other side it look as though the frame is already in place so you just need to insulate and drywall...i probably wouldn't trouble myself with the job though personally.

emma69

My exterior basement walls have (and I am sure there is a technical term here.....) what looks like clear plastic bags filled with pink fluff. I have found the chaps in Rona and Home Depot very helpful when i ask about things in such terms. A smile, low cut top and english accent of course help

Steve_P

The exterior walls I agree and they do present all sorts of problems ours are still bare concrete for most of the same reasons you mention, it's an absolute electricians nightmare, along with phone lines, cable, a water line, a gas line and a dryer vent all exit the building in that area.

It is the one room in the house where if there is any extra heat at all I would want it to spread to other areas of the house i.e. the basement, so likely wouldn't insulate any interior walls.

Now heating ducts or hot water pipes they're another matter, I'd insulate whatever I could see or get to of those.

Atlantic Xpat

Thanks all for the thoughts and advice.

I certainly don't plan on insulating the interior walls as I want the heat to flow elsewhere. Doing something with the pipes for the hot water radiation is an excellent idea though and one that had not occurred.

I was curious as to whether others with finished basements had the same set up (e.g unfinished walls in the furnace room) and that does seem to be the case from this statistically unsound sample.

Cheers,
AX

startwin

Seeing as we're on the topic...... anyone had any experience with insulating a crawl space? Our rancher is darned cold in the winter, and there's some pink batten insulation down there, but someone mentioned spray foam insulation on all the exterior walls. But I wonder about air circulation and ventilation. Trouble is, it's just a 3 ft crawl space so hard to get down there and do the work yourself, and contractors cost a bomb.

livermanl

Personally my whole basement is unfirnished and bare. (will start work on it next year).

But whilst i was looking at houses before i chose my own i did notice that generally most houses are only part finished this is mainly down to one section being the 'furnace room' which is normally left untouched.

R I C H

Or part finished, so as not to attract a rise in city taxes.

livermanl

Spray foams will completely get rid of airflow generally but the trouble you will find is to get that 'air tight' coverage you need room to be able to saw against the structure so in a crawl space it might be tough to get a knife down there in order to give you a nice clean coverage...It could probably be done though although spray foam even when you do it yourself is expensive and is bad for the lungs so you might find yourself wheezing a bit if you do it this way.

Here are some videos of the spraying process.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?...um=4&ct=title#

livermanl

Also to note: In these videos they show the foam expanding around the plumbing which will work fine until you want/need to update the plumbing then it can be a pain to tear out the foam.
Whereas with conventional insultion you can just pull it out do what you need then put it back where it was. Spray foam is definately the best way to insulate a house though.

Mr Bean

All the houses I have worked on have had an unfinished mechanical room with the exception of custom homes. These were fully finished throughout the mechanical room with insulation and drywall, just like any other. Lagging the pipework and using duct insulation will also help.

fledermaus

MOH says all the copper pipe work should be insulated, you can buy the foam covers from Home Depot, Rona etc. A simple matter of cutting to length and fitting them.

He wouldnt worry about insulating the exterior walls.

He is worried about the flue. It should be rigid and not made from a flexible flue liner. You have a liner but no flue. He says this isnt structurally safe and has no strength. It's only a single wall.

Mr Bean

I've just looked at the pics and it looks like a boiler as opposed to a furnace. Do you have in floor heating or something? Looks like a boiler going into a humidifier or something. Can you confirm? I've passed the pic on to my guru bwty for analysis.