Hi, I’m Jeff Patterson with Home Repair Tutor, and in this video I’m going to share
with you how to insulate walls, specifically using Roxul insulation. This is a project
I’ve always wanted to do because Roxul is really, really cool. It’s a proven way to
not only insulate and lower your utility bills, but soundproof your house to a certain extent.
So I’m super stoked to share with you how I did it. I hope this video helps you out.
Let’s get to it. Here’s my exterior wall or walls – pretty
standard stuff. Got your stud bays. Here’s the Roxul ComfortBatt. That’s what I’m
going to be using. Now it saves energy, and it’s fire resistant. The fire resistant
part is why I’m using it. It’ll fit into 2x4 studs and joists, and each bag gives you
about 60 sq. ft. of coverage for exterior walls, basements, and crawlspaces. There are
12 batts per bag. They are 3½” thick and 15¼” wide. So it’ll fit a standard stud
bay. Roxul’s made out of stone wool, which gives it the fire resistance. But make sure
you wear a respirator, long sleeved shirt, and gloves because, like, every insulation
– it’s itchy if you get it on your skin. So start by placing the batt at the top of
the stud bay, flush with any header. And then tuck it in so that it’s flush with the studs.
You don’t want to smush it down because that’ll ruin the R-value. As you can see
here, it’s flush with the studs, and that helps maintain its efficiency.
More often than not, you’re going to have to cut the bottom batt to size. So get your
measurement from the bottom of the top batt to the top of the bottom base plate. Get that
measurement. And then you can cut your batt using either a drywall knife or a standard
bread knife because this is kind of like cutting through a loaf of bread. But you want to make
that bottom batt ½-1” longer than the measurement that you got. And you do that because you
want the batt to fit tight to the bottom plate and then to the bottom of the top batt. As
you can see here, the fit is pretty tight. There are no gaps in between the batts and
the top and the bottom of the stud bay. Now if you have an irregular-sized bay – so
in this case, I have one that measures about 10” – what you want to do is add ½-1”
to the width of the Roxul piece that you’re going to cut to size. So my stud bay was about
10” wide, so I cut the Roxul at 11”. Again, it’s like cutting through a loaf of bread.
All you need to do now is tuck in that piece of Roxul, and that extra ½-1” distance
gives it a really nice, tight fit and improves the energy efficiency.
How do you handle pipes in your stud bay? Well, what you do is you get the measurement
from the edge of the pipe to the edge of the stud, and you transfer that measurement to
the Roxul batt. And then you cut out a groove the same width as the pipe into the Roxul.
And then remove about one half of the insulation. What I found with pipes is it’s best to
fit the Roxul in the center of the stud bay because the pipe has a little bit of flexibility,
and you can slide it up into the bay, like I did here. So that’s how you cut around
pipes. But wires a little bit different. So what
you do is you look at the wire, and you cut a groove into the Roxul – now this is per
the Roxul directions. And what you do is you place the batt into the stud bay so that the
wire fits into that groove. So that’s how you handle electrical wires.
Electrical boxes are a little bit different. You need to get the measurement of where the
electrical box is, and then cut out sections of the Roxul so that the Roxul fits nice and
snug to the box. Well, that’s how you insulate walls using
Roxul. Super simple and straightforward, right? Not only does it insulate and lower your utility
bills, it also soundproofs to a certain extent – and that is really important if you got
loud kids or friends who like to stay over at your house late at night when it’s time
for you to go to bed. All right. Remember, if you haven’t already
done so, you can click the subscribe button. That way you’ll get one of my videos every
single Friday. It’s meant to help you, that is, the videos are meant to help you with
your own projects. I think you’ll really, really like them. So click that subscribe
button. And that’s it for today. Thanks for joining
me. I really appreciate your time. Take care. I’ll see you soon.