Ok, I live in a 4-story townhouse with a garage on the first floor and the living room is on the second floor above. since the garage is not a conditioned space, the builder went strictly by code and only insulated walls that are shared with a conditioned space. So I have the entire front wall of the garage and a portion of the side wall (about 3 or 4 stud bays since the front door is set back from the front of the house) that are not insulated. The stud bays on the side wall and above the garage door are easy to insulate. My question is I have my breaker panel on the front wall of the garage, in the 3-foot space between the garage door and side wall. I assume there is a lot of wiring in this location and am wondering how best to insulate/air seal this area so cold air does not seep up into the living room (as it currently does!). Should I just cut the top of the drywall near the ceiling and spray foam to seal any air gaps aruond the wiring and header? I don't think I should fill the space with insulation as I am concerned with heat build-up in the wiring. If it was one or two wires, I wouldn't be concerned, but if all the wiring is above the panel, that could start to build up some heat. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thank You, Neil

(Same duplex rental with the cracked up toilet with the strange toilet sealing ring.) This 2 story duplex has lots of original wood single pane French style windows on both floors. The downstairs people have the full basement. The house heating system(no AC) has only 1 zone with thermostat control downstairs. The upstairs people currently can store stuff in the walk-up-the-steps, floorboarded attic. In fact I had to haul a bunch of junk out of there yesterday, and the boss came and got it from the living room where I put it, just an hour ago. The boss wanted it out of there so he can blow in insulation ontop of what is up there. What a shame IMO. The work someone went through building the insulated flip open (both directions)trap door at the top of the steps. I am wondering if perhaps this is not wise. Consider the fact that the the thermostat calls for heat by what the downstairs says it needs. Consider that yes, the heat rises through the ceiling, enters the upstairs, then goes up into that ceiling. But consider that on it's way up, it also is trying to go out first and second floor windows and walls. Consider that the stat might come back on, first, irregardless of what the upstairs ceiling situation is. And consider there is some insulation already up there (did not see if it is 3 1/2 or 5 1/2 inches) and floorboarded to boot. Is insulating really going to cause the downstairs thermostat to delay from coming on by any signifiacnt margin if more insulation is added? And if by some chance in theory it will help SOME - is it worth killing that nice space up there where people upstairs can store completely intact Christmas trees, excercize bikes(one was up there), saved area rug from some other address(one was up there), antiques they might like to buy and store somewhere, and who knows all that people like to use attics for. OH, it also has lights up there and light switch at bottom of the attic steps. And, no history of bats. I want to be able to share responses I get with the boss. To me, my opinion is that not only for the tenants sake does it add value, but in case he sells the house(he has sold several just this year alone), that that useable attic space up there may actually add value to the house.