My wife and I are about to have our second kid and are moving our oldest into what was the spare bedroom (northwest side of house). The entire house is brick, built in the late 50's, and is not insulated. The west wall of this room is adjacent to the garage. The garage is not insulated, and the room can get pretty cold in the winter, due to little sun exposure. I get the reason why you wouldn't use R19 crammed into a space for 2x4 walls, but I was wondering if this has an inverse effect in insulating the wall. I found really cheap R19 insulation on craigslist (about 1/2 of what I would spend on R13 new). I want to insulate this wall to help keep my son warmer in the winter, but if I can save a few dollars in the process, I would love to do so. Any insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Hugh

Hi - I purchased my 30ish year old split level house approximately two years ago. It has a fully finished basement, however I've found for the past two winters that it gets very cold in my basement rec room. First off, I'm located in Nova Scotia, Canada. Thanks to our location on the ocean we don't tend to get that cold, usually no colder than -15 celsius (5 fahrenheit) in winter. My house has electric baseboard heat, and with it running constantly I'll be lucky if I can get the temperature in that room to around 19 C (66 F) on cold days. So I decided to cut a few holes in my walls to see what sort of insulation I've got and here's what I've found: My basement is partly underground, with the concrete foundation wall extending up around 4 feet or so. There is 2x6 framing on top of the concrete, with fibreglass batts. In front of the concrete is a 2x4 wall (floor to ceiling), which forms the interior wall. There is approximately a half inch gap between the 2x4s and the concrete (wood is not touching concrete), and there are fibreglass batts in the 2x4 wall, but only going up as high as the top of the concrete, at which point there are additional fibreglass batts cut and laid horizontally across the top. The vapour barrier and drywall are attached to the 2x4 wall. I'm attaching a picture so you can see what I'm talking about. There's a gap of about 11 inches between the fibreglass insulation in the 2x6 framing (top half of the wall) and the vapour barrier. Is this normal practice? Shouldn't the entire wall cavity be filled with insulation right up to the plastic vapour barrier? This wall by the way usually feels cold to the touch during the winter. Would it be worth while to fill this void with additional insulation or should I continue looking elsewhere for the cause of my problem? Thanks