Insulating a 1950s bungalow
Q What’s the best way to insulate the brick walls of my small bungalow built in 1952? There’s just plaster against the inside layer of brick with no insulation. I’m having insulation blown into the attic and I’m considering doing the same thing with wall cavities.
A Your plan for attic insulation is great, but the walls pose more of a challenge. I’ve seen a number of small brick bungalows built in Canada in the early 1950s, and none offered enough open air space between layers of brick to allow significant insulation. Even if the space wasn’t blocked here and there by blobs of mortar (very common), the space simply isn’t wide enough to allow meaningful amounts of insulation to be added. If there’s an easy way to add insulation internally to these walls effectively, I’ve never seen it.
All this said, there is one way to add significant insulation value to the walls of a home like yours. Applying rigid pieces of extruded polystyrene foam insulation to the interior face of exterior walls makes a big difference.
You can apply new drywall directly over the foam with no need for strapping.
This isn’t easy work, and it does require redoing all the trim. The good news is that you only need to do it on exterior walls and it will reduce heating bills a lot. You’ll notice a big difference in comfort, too.
Q Do you recommend those fans that sit on top of woodstoves and operate from the heat of the stove?
A Any kind of a fan that blows air across a woodstove gets more heat from your firewood and helps distribute heat more evenly around your home. They’re a good thing, but in my experience there’s not a lot of difference in the performance of different brands of non-electric fans. Like you say, they convert the heat of the stove itself into the motion of a spinning blade. Fans like these do some noticeable good and they’re silent. Your main job is to decide if you need more heat distribution or less. One electric wood stove fan I’ve seen in action is called the Hot Shot and it makes a big difference because it moves a lot of air. My son has one in his house, it plugs in, it uses a tiny amount of electricity and it does make a little soft noise, but boy, does it make a difference.
Q Why is it that no woodworkers I watch on YouTube give specific amounts of time it takes to make projects? It’s discouraging for newbies like me when something looks easy but takes me forever.
A My own approach to learning new skills has been that a job takes as long as it takes. That said, I always try to work more efficiently, but never at the cost of quality. Eventually, after years, the magic of experience will kick in and quality will come together with speed and freedom from errors. I made tons of mistakes of design and workmanship when I began woodworking in high school, but now I rarely make any significant errors.
There’s no magic, just do the work, aim towards excellence and speed will develop in time. The same dynamic works for every manual skill I’ve ever tried to learn.
When I started doing traditional stonework in 1986, I made tons of errors and was particularly slow. Now I’m faster and almost never make anything beyond tiny mistakes. It’s such a pleasure to be able to work error-free or nearly error-free.
Anyone can achieve these results. Impatience is the thing that makes you discouraged and impatience is your biggest enemy.