Insulation Day

What a MESS!

This weekend of March 15th and 16th 2009 was insulation day. The age of the house (and some probing) indicated that there was no insulation inside the walls. Being that many of the walls needed to be patched and re-painted, we decided on blowing recycled fiber insulation into the walls.

How in the world do people do this with carpet/furniture in their houses?

SATURDAY MARCH 15TH

Here is Uncle Mike feeding the green beast that was the blower/hoppper for the dustiest and messiest thing ever: Recycled “green” insulation.

This is what the entire floor of the house looked like as we fed the walls with this dust.

Holes were drilled at the top of the outside walls at 1.175 inches in diameter between studs. Then a small air-escape hole was drilled nearby.

Here, Nick seeks cover in the living room as Aunt Amy covers her mouth and nose to keep from breathing the dust.

In all of the pictures and documentation of this machine, nowhere does it say how often the nozzles will clog and blow dust all over the room.

Jessica was at work today, she has NO idea what she’ll walk into when she gets home to see her kitchen.

One small step for man, one giant leap towards the completion of this project.

A large mechanical chopper breaks up the loose insulation before a smaller blower chopper forces it into this long tube.

It took about 10 hours of work to get to this final room. Lights were needed. The house still has no power, so the generator that ran the blower was also running this light tree.

I was completely covered in this dust as I crawled along the floor and scooped up the wasted insulation, and carried it in a 35 gallon can back to the blower. But, Ron had the worst job.

The blower nozzle would constantly clog, probably once every 30 seconds. Probably one whole bail of insulation was wasted because of this.

While the boys played in the dirt upstairs, The girls worked to remove the horrible linoleum from the kitchen floor. Unfortunately it seemed it was several layers deep in some spots.

SUNDAY MARCH 16th

Not as many pictures for Sunday. Mainly today was Clean-UP from yesterday. But, Ron and I hooked up the plumbing.

I climbed up on the roof to remove the old satellite dish from the house and noticed exactly how much of yesterday’s insulation had blown out the windows and landed on the roof.

Still no heat or light, but today, Ron and I officially activated the water and plumbing! Here’s some proof!

Monday is a busy day so there won’t be any work done. Tuesday its time to get ready for wiring inspection.

Drywall patching will begin because its warm this week.