I live in South Tx, I have a Metal Work Shop. In Humid weather I get condensation on everything in the shop. I know I need to insulate, but how much. This is not a living area, I just want to stop my tools from rusting, and do it at the lowest cost. To my knowledge the sprayon is not available to the DIY's yet. Would the rigid foil coated foam board sold by Home Depot, Lowes etc, be enough? Would I need to do the walls as well as the ceiling? Thanks :confused:

Hi: I'm new to this site...I previously spent my work hours at Chevytalk.com but now that project is almost finished. My wife and I are remodeling our 104 year old 1 1/2 story house in St. Paul, MN. We have 5 knee wall/crawlspace areas, with the accompanying slanted ceilings. The ceilings are all still plaster/lathe or plaster/plasterboard and have varying amounts of insulation in them. The attic has blown in fiberglass that I plan to add to. When we re-roofed in 2002, we added ridge vent to the main ridge with the intent of adding soffit vent when we could. There is a dormer (not sure if this is the correct term) with these knee walls on another portion of the roof that we didn't vent, because there is no attic above it, it's plaster up to the peak (about 7' tall). We have removed the plaster and lathe from the end walls with the intent of insulating them, and we have also removed all of the insulation from the crawlspace behind the knee walls. Here are our questions: We would like to insulate, vent and have a proper vapor barrier the slanted ceiling/knee wall area in such a way that the space is still usable for storage. I have read the DOE's flyer on this, but it doesn't really tell me how we could install such venting and insulation. The amount of nails sticking through the roof decking is amazing, and there is still quite a bit of insulation stuck up behind the plaster. I could with some sort of hook remove all of the old insulation, and then attempt to slide rigid insulation in behind it, but is that a bad idea? Is there a way that people have made this work? We would really prefer to avoid removing the slanted ceilings. The plaster is still in decent shape for the most part. I also wanted to ask a little about the painted on form of vapor barrier. Does it work? I'm always a little suspicious about anything that sounds like a cure-in-a-can, but we want to do something. Thanks for any input. Andy