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Cold closets in dutch colonial home

clouts69 | Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on November 7, 2009 04:31am

We have a dutch colonial style home and in one of the bedrooms the closets (side by side) are cold. The roofline comes down a few feet and then you have about 4 feet of straight wall to the floor. When you run your hand along the top of the straight wall it feels cold and as you run your hand further down to the floor it gets warmer. The roofline feels warm also. I assumed that insulation had settled and I was going to rent a machine to blow in additional insulation. However, after drilling some exploratory holes it turns out that the insulation runs from floor to roofline. The bedroom gets somewhat chilly in the winter because of this. Since the insulation does run from floor to roofline what may be causing the cold air to seep in from those areas (both closets) and how can I go about fixing it. There are two other rooms where the roofline comes down and meets a short wall but neither are cold.

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Replies

  1. woody18428 | Nov 07, 2009 04:08pm | #1

    is the house ballon framed ?? meaning studs run from basement to attic ? How old is the home

    1. clouts69 | Nov 07, 2009 05:54pm | #3

      It is not balloon framed and built in 1987

  2. Clewless1 | Nov 07, 2009 05:13pm | #2

    I'm not real clear about your condition. You say the insulation runs from floor to roof line. Implication is there is no top plates to the knee wall you described. This would mean the studs are attached to the roof rafters. Have you no access to the space behind the wall? Which wall is cold, the back wall of the closet or the room side wall?

    Before mobilizing to insulate you need to confirm the problem. The cold is simply a symptom.

    1. clouts69 | Nov 07, 2009 06:25pm | #4

      I can only assume there are top plates. Yes, I have no access to the space behind the wall. The back wall (outside wall) is the cold one. I have included some photos if that will help. One photo is of the inside of the closet to illustrate construction (probably won't help much). Another is an outside shot of where the closets are (the area above the windows is where the cold closet walls are). The last two are from the attic into the area above the bedroom.

      1. Clewless1 | Nov 07, 2009 08:39pm | #5

        ? So the back wall of the closet is the exterior wall of the house? Or is it facing an attic space above the windows in the pic? Either way, there may be a double top plate on the wall that is a naturally thermal cold spot. That is, it often isn't insulated and in the case of an attic behind it, isn't covered by sheathing, either, so is somewhat susceptible to cold infiltrating the gaps in the framing (e.g. between plates and at studs and plate joints).

        Just thinking out loud a bit. I'm not sure what the rafter insulation picture is of. Attic ceiling insulation and the baffles, but this is the ceiling area (i.e. floor of the attic behind the closet), right?

        1. clouts69 | Nov 07, 2009 10:27pm | #6

          Back of closet is exterior wall, yes.The attic insulation pic is the ceiling of the bedroom and closets.It sounds like maybe there is nothing that can be done? The other side of the bedroom (south facing) does not seem to have this problem.

          1. Clewless1 | Nov 08, 2009 04:45pm | #7

            OK ... my guess is that you have a double top plate on the wall. Maybe the insulation and baffle stop somewhat short of the wall top, leaving a little more exposed than what it's supposed to be. The attic insulation if the baffle was installed to or just past the wall top should cover the area. But it is still going to have a tendency to be a cold spot in the construction, I think.

            Maybe someone else will chime in w/ a comment/point of view.

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