Insulating a brick home?

Question

We have an older brick ranch home with plaster interior walls. The plaster is put right on wood stripping that is right up against the brick. Thus, since the plaster filled in every crack and space there is no room in between the plaster or the wood stripping and the brick to blow insulation into. The walls are cold and therefore cold inside the house. What can we do to insulate this house short of removing the plaster and wood stripping adding a wood frame to put drywall on and then blowing in insulation?
Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it. I hope someone knows how to insulate this old brick house.

Answer 1

Short of the renovation you have put forth there are only a few options. Unfortunately the thermal/insulation benefits are minimal due to the lack of space. (1" of spray foam insulation only adding about an R-4 to the wall system) But this does not mean that you cannot be productive in slowing the heat loss through your walls. (Existing 8" brick wall {no exterior siding} 7/8" air gap plaster and lathe figures to about an R-4).
This can be done by "air sealing" the cavities above and below your wall (attic and basement/slab/crawlspaces) to slow the stack effect in your building and the resultant heat loss from the air washing.
In the attic look along the perimeter of your building, see that gap where the attic deck (ceiling) meets the brick? Probably a minimum of 7/8" of an inch? Use a foam product like "Great stuff" to seal the top of that air chase. A lot of the time, particularly in older buildings this air chase ties directly to your basement as a hidden connection and as your home "Breathes" drawing in cold air at the base while exhausting hot air (Which you just paid to make hot) out the top.
While you are crawling around up here take a moment to seek out any other hidden paths such as open party walls or the 3" clearance around your chimney. (this is a code issue and sealing it requires use of fire resistant materials such as metal flashing and hi temp caulk, neither is a show stopper) Once you have found anything that looks like a potential for air to leak out of the interior of your house into the attic take a couple more minutes to look around. odds are it has been awhile since you have been up here.
Are there any pipes or ducts that run up here?
Are they insulated?
Look up, do you see any signs of moisture or stains which might indicate that you have had moisture in the past?
Can you see the duct from your bathroom fan running up through your roof? What? It only stops right here in the attic? Hmmm I wonder if pumping all that bathroom moisture into here is a good idea... Make sure it goes through the roof deck and vents outside or plan on taking up fungal farming as a future hobby (Oh look at this cute back mold).
In a nutshell, Houses leak and the top of houses leak warm heated air. They will leak every place that you have a construction joint where two planes come together.
Once you have air sealed consider insulating up here using loose blown Cellulose.
What’s that, you already have fiberglass bats’ to an R-*.
Odds are that what you think is the rated R value for your roof is not the performance you are getting. Even with a Perfect initial installation, the gap created by the framing (1 1'2" ever 16") has dropped the effective rated r value by a quarter. and f it was less than perfect, with gaps and irregularities this drops even more.
Cellulose will fill evenly across the entire area without voids or dead spots giving you the closest to the rated performance.
Now go into the basement/ bottom and perform the same scrutiny. Foam and seal all obvious openings along the perimeter, then move on to any obvious penetrations such as pipe/electrical chases, duct chasings etc….
By the way…. Do this even if you do decide to take the first option and build out the wall. Your home will be much more comfortable, efficient and healthy because of it.

Answer 2

Wow! You actually have a brick/stone house. Just for some of the readers. How they used to build a brick house was to put up the brick first and fill the insides later.

Now days, there are few really brick houses built. Now days, they actually build a frame house and use the brick as a siding. In many instances you can actually remove the brick and reside it differently.

I am sure you've seen a brick siding stub wall. These only go partially up the side. These are removable.

Now to answer your question. There isn't much you can do, but let me give you a number of a guy that sells a ceramic additive for paint. You can also Google ceramic paint additives and look for someone cheaper or better.

These ceramic additives are suppose to insulate your house by reflecting radiated heat back in, or if painted on the outside, radiate it back out. What happens in Summer, I suppose is that the radiated heat doesn't get inside as easy and the house stays cooler.

They guy's name is Herb, and his number is 218-399-8994.

However, as I said, you can Google this and find others.

Good Luck

Answer 3

Short of removing the stripping and redo the walls - nothing. If there is no room to blow it in then you should put up new walls. Insulate before putting drywall on.

Found a tip from the Ask This Old House guys - see link

Answer 4

very confusing subject. look using google and yahoo. it can help!

Answer 5

tricky factor. browse from google. this might help!