Pump House Insulation and Wall Board

2012 - 2013 ~ by Griz (aka Steve Stovner) ~
A long time ago I bought over 500 cubic feet (about 250 2"x3'x4' sheets) of insulation, for next to nothing, from the US Army via govliquidation.com. The 3 layers are: (1) thick tar paper, (2) 1.2" closed cell foam and (3) 3/4" composite of what looks like mostly ground up paper. Trying to burn the stuff is interesting: the tar paper will burn, the foam melts but does not "burn" well and the brown composite stuff will not burn at all. Each sheet is R12 so a stack of 3 sheets (with staggered joints) in the ceiling should give me R36 and I still have over 3" of ventilation space between the insulation and the roofing. Note: I did the shop upstairs apartment ceiling the same way, only 4 sheets deep. It's messy to cut (lots of fine clinging dust) so I do the first cut outside on saw horses with a hand saw. Then I clean them up with the shop vac and bring them in for final sizing and installation. Finish cuts are made on my small bandsaw (1/64" thick blade) with a shop vac taped under the table to catch the little dust that is generated. I'm glad that this project will use up the last of this stuff - I hate working with it and its been taking up prime "under cover" storage space for over 16 years.

The last of the R-12 insulation board was used in part of the south wall (double layer) then R-19 pink fiberglass (above right) was used in the rest of the walls.

A layer of 6 mil clear plastic makes an excellent vapor barrier.

Wall board is secured with 1-1/2" drywall type screws (heads slightly recessed). Screw holes were filled, paint touched up and door trim installed.

Then the whole south wall was disassembled, 500 gallon tank brought in and wall reassembled.