In the video series below John shows us how do to an interior blown-in insulation upgrade to an old lath-and-plaster house. The work was not easy, but not too hard, definitely worth it to reduce the longer-term energy costs for the home. The interior plaster and lath has been removed due to significant cracking throughout the house.
The cladding is original cedar clapboard. The house was built in 1916 and had hard and thick lath and plaster walls. I am about do what many in the building science world consider a big no-no: insulating the exterior walls of a previous uninsulated, 100 year old home. John was up to the do-it-yourself challenge, and helped to keep us on budget and on schedule. The contractor is going to put up a drywall when the work is done. During the remodeling, kitchen walls are all opened up, and as expected, there is no insulation.
A friend has bought an old (as in 100 years old) single floor house in SF Bay Area and is getting some remodeling work done. The costs for the insulation and rental equipment were affordable, but using contractors for the labor for would have far exceeded our meager budget. Insulating old house, with lath and plaster. In order to maintain the integrity of the historic exterior, as the home is in the Historic Meridian Park district, we chose to use blown-in cellulose insulation installed from the interior. Installing costly energy-efficient new HVAC systems would do no good without properly insulating the house. it is a traditional build sandstone outer wall. All you need is a compressor, a rube with a tee, one end in a tube that goes into the wall say 1m long, one end is shot into with a air jet gun, the middle of the tee goes via a flexible clear hose into a bag of beads, Ventrui does the rest.
Many older homes, while well constructed, have no insulation in the walls. I am planning a complete refurbishment of a Victorian detached house. In some rooms we’d like to keep the old lath and plaster walls. add the spray head to the end of the fill nozel. The most important green upgrade, with biggest bang for the buck, was to better insulate the building. We did several energy-saving sustainability upgrades as part of our Delaware Project restoring a vacant historic home.