Triangle Abyss

We have a really interesting situation. I talked about it two blogs back. It had to do with discovering more BATS in our attic!  This time just in a tiny part of an attic that we didn't know really existed until recently.

Our original portion of our house was built in the late 1800s. Then in the early 1900s another section was either built on or added on. Where the two houses meet, there is a leftover triangle of space! I called it the Triangle Abyss.

(that vent in the pic was just added, it wasn't there to begin with)

The portion on the left side was the original house from the 1890s or so. The portion on the right side was moved here later in the 1920's or early 1930's from looking at the census records. That is when the elderly widow who lived on the left passed away, and a growing family with multiple children moved in. 

We think the right side portion was moved here from another location because of the moving beams that were underneath that are still there. They look like steel railroad tracks! We are not sure. Or was it built on site here? This tract of land was originally located in the rural township so the records are not accurate. Once it was annexed to the city there is nothing at city hall that is really informational about this property. Either way, the two portions were joined where the yellow dotted line is:

Where they were joined together, this triangular shape was created that really isn't open to either attic to the North or to the attic to the South. The yellow rectangle in the Google Earth view below is the portion we are just talking about. It's probably only about 10 to 12 ft long, about 4 ft wide by 3 ft deep. It is only on the back portion of the join between the two houses. It doesn't even extend to the front of the houses, because of the horizontal roof peak on the old side.

We noticed that there may have been some heat loss through this portion of the roof because there was some condensation on the outside last winter dripping down and making marks on the new siding that we had put on in the fall. It's covered with rubber EPDM roofing material that is tight and secure all around.

So this summer Steve has decided to explore it and check it out and see exactly what is in this triangular space. We noticed some bats had gotten in along the broken lip edge of the fascia by the soffit. Steve sealed up after the bats vacated this fall and now it's time to permanently correct the situation and see what the insulation problem is, as well as adding adequate ventilation.

He had to cut in access hole the same size as a vent that we purchased last week. Measuring to mark where to cut... 

He carefully cut it out with the little oscillating saw to make sure that it was the exact size of the vent grid that he will seal in place later once we are all done.  And he will fix the broken fascia board. That is where the bats had been getting in during the summer! 

He looked in with a flashlight, and of course it was one big long hollow triangular tube for about 12 ft back! There was evidence that there had been some bats in there, but there were none in there now. They have all returned to their wintering-over location in an old mine shaft in Iron Mountain.  He could see the old roofing shingles slanting down from the right and he could see the side framing of the newer house on the left where it had been joined together. So this little triangular roof space had been wide open with never any insulation at all since it was built!  The wall to the left is our shower stall in the bathroom. We have a ceiling vent and it's piped outside in the main attic, but we think moist air is escaping through the side wall into this triangular abyss. 

Because it wasn't open to either of the attic spaces, it never got any insulation blown into it last year from us either. We decided to take care of it now, but trying to get insulation pushed back in there was going to be difficult. Especially where the opening Steve cut happened to be at a wall stud. He didn't even get a very wide wall opening, so there was no way we could push in batts of insulation. The next step was to buzz up to the home improvement store and rent an insulation blower! He bought three big bundles of blow-in cellulose insulation in because he really wasn't sure how much we would need.  Time to get to work! 

This is what the stuff looks like. It's a recycled cellulose blow-in product that can be blown in with a machine. It's very similar to what we had blown in last year in both of the attic portions of the house.

This is the hopper where clumps of the insulation are tossed into. There's a big auger unit that chops it up into fine pieces and then a big blower that blows it through a hose. Someone has to be on one end of the hose up on the ladder. And someone has to be down on the ground filling the hopper.

Guess who got to be the person filling the hopper?

Here is a little video clip that I shot and put on for you. The reason why the hose is so long is the instructions say you need to let the material travel through the entire length of the 100 ft of hose so it breaks up properly into small fluffy bits to be blown. They said do not coil up the hose tight and small but instead stretch it out long and in a big loop to get to where it needs to go.

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day with blue sky and no wind. It was perfect to work on this project and not be battling the elements. We rented the blower unit for 4 hours and went to work right after lunch.

Steve was the ladder guy to go up high enough to do the work on his end and I was on the other end filling the material into the machine.

On his hip is a long long cord and the remote control to turn on and off the blower unit, so he can stop it when he needs to. Of course, we were both wearing our respirator masks. You can see in his hole where the stud of the wall takes up this very center of the opening. So he had to work around that. To get the hose way to the back portion of this triangular space, he taped a long extension pole to the end of the hose and shoved it way to the back. Periodically he would pull the hose out, shut the machine off and peer into the hole with a flashlight. He would have to wait for things to settle down a little bit to see how full he was getting the cavity. He needed to leave a little air space at the top.

It went rather quickly, as there really wasn't all that much space to fill. We only used two of the bags of insulation, so the third unopened bag could be returned with the machine. Once the triangular space was filled, Steve took out some good adhesive exterior caulk and caulked around the edges of the vent.

He screwed that up into place and double checked the seal along the edge of the soffit where it meets the fascia. That is all sealed to prevent any more bats from coming back in next spring. He will replace the little broken wooden piece of the fascia later, and paint it to match.

So that is how we spent our beautiful Saturday afternoon, blowing in insulation. Not only will this help with the condensation of the heat loss resulting in the water dripping out on our siding, but it should deter any bats from wanting to move back in next spring.

My next blog I will talk about Sunday and our Halloween/birthday celebration. This is enough for today. Steve left to go help his brother Pete with a welding project and I have the entire day to myself to get some sewing done!