Insulation between floors...

12 years ago

I just moved in to a house built in 1924. We are removing a number of walls and, thus, have exposed a good bit of ceiling. In doing so, we discovered that the second floor has three ceilings... ceiling tile, stapled into 2x4s, that are nailed into drywall, then another layer of 2x4s and another layer of drywall. Above this layer of drywall is a TON of loose insulation.

The original idea was to gingerly pull down all but the top layer of drywall and patch it up. But we've quickly realized that this is going to take just about forever, and it may just make sense to pull the whole thing down and put up new drywall.

There is no insulation at all between the first and second floor. I figure that, originally, the third floor was an unfinished attic, so it needed the insulation. However, there is no door anywhere between the second and third floor, so I'm not sure if the insulation is doing much of anything.

We live in Ithaca, so the winter temperatures sit around 15F/-9.4C as a low and 35F/1.6C as a high for a good three months. That may be a consideration, but like I said, with no door between floors, I don't know if the insulation is going to change anything.

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Comments (4)

worthy
12 years ago
So it's a three storey house; but the third storey is really an attic.

If you plan to use the attic for living space, it should be insulated if you want to save on heating/cooling costs.

If you do not plan to use the attic for living space, removing the insulation doesn't make much sense. (Of course, I haven't seen the condition of the insulation or the drywall.)

with no door between floors

Agreed, unless a door is added, the insulation is pointless.
krayers
12 years ago
We insulationed between part of the 1st & 2nd floors (in the bedroom areas) because we could close off the bedrooms & not heat the entire 2nd floor when our kids grew up & moved out. However, we did not insulate in the sitting room at the top of the stairs, because like you, there was no door to close off the room. We found we'd made a large mistake. Sound carries between the downstairs TV room (directly below) and the upstairs sitting room, making it too noisy to view a TV in both areas. Think the insulation would have really helped with the noise.
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sneezye
12 years ago
You could leave the last layer of drywall intact and put new drywall over it. No need to pull it down. Then you don't have to mess with removing the insulation.
kudzu9
12 years ago
Also bear in mind that, if the loose insulation is vermiculite (which sort of looks like small pieces of gravel, but is lighter in weight), this material frequently contains asbestos, so it would be best to just let it be, unless you have it tested and can confirm that it is not contaminated.

Here is a link that might be useful: Asbestos in vermiculite