In finishing off my attic, I need to seal off the louvers and insulate with r13.

How should I go about this? What layers of matterial should be used between the outside of the house and the inside of the attic?

One note? The vinyl siding louvers will remain on the outside of the house, so there will be some protection from rain.

Thanks for your help!
Joe

 

Im at a loss here. You cant seal off the vents there . What do you have

ED

 

I'm finishing off my attic. I already have a heat pump up there. I need to put up dry wall. Shouldn't I seal off the louvers. Another option would be to have the louvers still open and put the dry wall overtop of it. I can't think of why I would want to do this.

Since the attic will be a finished off room with it's own heat pump to control the temp, I would think that I would want to seal off opening in the side of my house with some sort of board and then put insulation between it and the drywall.

Does this help you undetstand what I'm trying to do?

 

Joe - I'm new to this list but at the risk of sounding, well, over agressive, you are planning on replacing the ventilation characteristics of louver vent with something appropriate - correct?

I'm assuming what you are talking about here is a Gable vent. Can the louvers be manually closed? Obviously if so I'd close them. I suppose you could apply a small sheet of plastic over the opening to keep out insects and such - but I don't really like the idea of applying a vapor barrier on the outside of the insulation. Perhaps a small amount of house wrap (vents to the outside) could be applied just inside the vent. Then an appropriatly sized pice of the hard foam board inside that - then your insulation.

If you don't already know this though - I can't stress enough how important it will be to replace the gable vent with adequate rood venting. Most likely I would guess in your application a crown vent would be appropriate if you are applying sheet-rock ceiling directly to the roof rafter supports. Making sure that there is adequate ventilation between the roof and the ceiling insulation above the ceiling.

THNX
BRAD

 

Brad,
What I've done is the following:
-Install soffit vents in front and rear fo house
-Install rafter vents from soffit to ridge vent
-Install R19 from knee walls to ridge vent
-Install heat pump to cool/heat attic.

There is no gable venting. Only venting is done via heat pump for living space and soffit/rafter vents/& ridge vent between drywall and roof.

Does this sound appropriate or do I need something else...

Thanks for your help.
Joe

 

That all sounds like you're doing the right things.

What louvers are you speaking of then - I assumed (and we all know what that means ) that you meant a louvered gable vent , sorry .

BTW - what Heat Pump system are you going with. I've been considering finishing and insulating my garage and going with a heat pump to take the edge off in the winter/summer months to make it easier to work on my cars.

THNX
BRAD

 

The louvers are the vents that were on the 2 sides of the house. I need to seal them off. I'm planning on sealing them up with 1/2" treated plywood installed with nails, and calking. Insulation will be inside this and then the drywall. Outside of the plywood will be the vynal louvers (just for looks, I guess, since there will be no real vents here).
Does this sound OK?

As for the heat pump... I'm using a 1.5 ton carrier. I don't have the exact model, but it should be the smallest heat pump they carry. It has the inside and outside units. If this is enough info, great. If you want the exact model # let me know and I can check it out.