I have a kitchen remodel that I am on. It is a 1930’s house with 12″ thick concrete exterior walls with a 6″ stone veneer, and an inch of plaster directly on the concrete. A 17″ WALL! The kitchen is 24′ by 18′ with two walls being exterior, south and west. We removed the drywall and firring strips from a previous kitchen remodel and replace that with 2×4 studs flat. Due to the fact that the existing walls were by and large not plumb; the 2×4’s are rarely in contact with the existing walls. For the most part they are fastened to the existing floor sheathing and framing and to the ceiling framing above and shimmed midheight and fastended with primarily Tapcon screws.
Our original plan was to go with a closed cell spray foam which at 1.5″ would yield an r-15. Unfortunately we are having some difficulty scheduling the contractor to come and do it. And he is the only one I can find locally (and he isn’t even that local) to do it.
Keeping in mind the fact that these would be the only walls (368 square feet of wall) of the approximatly 2,000 square foot (floor area) house.
My question is, I was doing some reading on r-value adjusted for thermal mass and was wondering how much of an impact the insulation would have on the stucture and if it would actually have the negative effect of reducing the heat transfer of the stored energy.
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Hunts with garlic.
des,
If the thermal mass is outside of the insulation envelope it is a negative rather than a benefit.. Thus once it gets cold it will tend to remain gold longer and once it gets hot it will tend to remain hot longer..
To use this as a thermal storage bank you would need to include it inside the heating envelope.. For example, build a glass wall out side the stone walls and then the sun would warm it up slowly and slowly release it's heat yeilding you a net solar gain.
I agree with frenchy that insulating the inside of the mass wall would not result in the payback you'd get from insulating the exterior (assuming you'd even want to do that).While you're calculating, figure the foam at about R6.5/inch aged, rather than R15 for 1.5".