Exterior INSULATION Details from Matt’s House

Welcome back to the Real ReBuild project. This is my personal family home I'm building and if you've seen my videos you know I don't mess around with "standard" construction. In this video I'll show you how I'm putting a thick blanket of R-13 insulation on the entire outside of my house. More and more builders are being forced to do exterior insulation as codes progress forward. See all the details in this video!

[paladin]

Nice job with "13" voice over.

[johnswackhammer]

Matt, I have been a builder for about twenty-five years and always have tried to build superior houses, but always have been held back by people’s budgets or the companies I have worked for wouldn’t spend the money to go the extra mile. Even though they or I built a beautiful home and reasonably energy efficient they just never
Satisfied me even when I was told I built another great home. At this point in my life where I’m trying to get started totally on my own and down size and build another smaller home for my self I am so grateful to stubble across you and your enthusiasm for building super nice homes with some of the greatest quality and efficiency that I have ever come across.
Your videos have totally impressed me and gives me great hope to build homes in the neatness, energy efficient, quality etc that you do, you can tell you put a piece of you in every home as I always did

[rickrudd]

"My 2 inch panel is R...THIRTEEN."

[justinl]

Lot's of great details here, but one important missing point for people in northern climates. Polyiso insulation is the worst choice for exterior insulation in cold climates. Polyiso is often chosen because it has the best R-value per inch, keeping wall thickness down, while being more expensive than other insulation types.

But what is often missed is that the R-values on packaging are measured at 75 degrees. So polyiso performs great when you don't really need it to (and when you are trying to keep a house cool, so it's not a bad choice in a cooling climate like Texas). But it's R-value drops massively with colder temperatures. At 40F, polyiso performs almost the same as XPS insulation, which is significantly cheaper. At 0F, XPS, EPS foam (cheaper still), and rockwool (also cheaper than polyiso), all have significantly better R-values than polyiso. I see people here in Maine put polyiso on the outside of their houses because they don't understand this. They are paying more for a worse performance than other products like EPS foam. In my climate, the same money will get you a thicker layer of EPS that will give effective performance of nearly DOUBLE the R-value. Polyiso is only useful if it will stay warm - so on exteriors of houses in warm climates, or inside (like basement interiors) in cold climates. And even then, it's only the right choice when you care about thickness. EPS and XPS still beat it when considering R-value-per-$.

[dienekes]

I had to tear the drywall out of one of the walls of a bedroom in my house and decided to try an experiment. Instead of putting bat insulation back into the cavities, I bought a couple of 4x8 sheets of the 2" foam insulation at HD, cut them into strips, and filled the cavities with them. Then I used spray foam to seal around the edges. I'm in Tucson AZ, and that room is the southeast corner of the house (I did this in the south wall) and has consistently been the coolest room in the house. It's AMAZING how well that insulation works, especially when it is sealed in and there is no air movement.

[arayahomes]

Every time you do the "ON THE BUILD SHOW" I always smile haha. Good way to end your videos

[guytech]

6:03 Bottom plate to protect the insulation:



Instead of using Lumber, use compose decking boards since its much more rot resist. You can rip the boards down into 2" strips so you don't really need a lot to go a long way.

[jamieohare]

Interested to see how he insulates the garage. Every house I’ve been in, any room above the garage is always cold in the winter

[weldon]

Risinger is going to cool the whole house with an ice cube.

[KaiAndrew]

Hey Matt! I thought you loved rockwool, why'd you decide to go with ISO?

[Junior-zfed]

Man I wish I could afford to have this guy build me a house

[sushrutachandramouli]

Take a shot every time Matt says "thicc blanket" in this series XD

[johnjslatteryherbalist]

I went with the Atlas AC Foam III product (also 2") for the purpose of stuccoing over the top. 3 years later, it's performing great along with upgrading all windows to dual pane. 70+ year old home that's become super efficient. with a 62F night and 98F day my home stays @78-80F unless we're cooking for any length of time inside. exterior insulation is a huge improvement and poly iso is the way to go for R value.
With the stucco, I used a vinyl starter track (like a weep screed) for the panels. It's perforated so if any water gets behind the stucco, it'll percolate down and out through the bottom of the track. I prefer this over trying to make it air tight, even in a desert climate.

[copper]

Thank you. I've taken your knowledge and used it on my house as well as informing my customers on their additions. 👍🤘

[RyanJohnsonD]

The perfect wall! Learned that from you. Thanks for showing this, Matt.

[adamburr]

Wow. This was super helpful. I'm in a situation where the prior 1970s construction is a dumpster fire with the vapor barrier against the drywall. This might be the solution to fixing it.

[SpudKai]

first video of yours ive seen, 3 mins in I already subed. Well done. I think I can learn a lot from this guy

[kyuhocho]

Can someone explain to me, who is the audience for this video?
I get it its for the builders and homeowner whos building their house.
But at what price range. if I'm building 200, 000 house I don't see a possible way to fit 2x code insulation on the budget for 2000+sqft house. On top of that, he bought the existing home.
is Matts spending financially justifiable or is he just spending for educational purposes and sponsors?
And at what would be the estimated cost of the home that is built with Matts method as a normal person whos building he/her first home.

p/s not hating on Matt loves he's videos

[flyeyes]

Polyisocyanurate in the south on the warm side makes sense. In the north, many of us believe the labeled R value. However, as I considered 2 or 3 in. of exterior c.i. I stumbled into the pentane condensation phase diagram and the semi-definitive studies by NRCA '09, '14; and BSR '13. With 2-in. exterior c.i. and R-13 in the stud cavity, I anticipated thermal performance of R4 to R5 per inch. Overnight it would be lower yet. While I ditched the idea and bought 3-in of EPS Type 9, I have mused over putting the polyiso on the inside (still thick enough to prevent summer condensation) . That appears to put the Class 1 vapor retarder in the right place for us Yankees, and we can put our interior furring over the polyiso in any direction as a screw base for the wall board and have clear voids for utilities. But there must be a fly in the ointment, otherwise wouldn't we already be doing this?

[nolanwalker]

This dude is going to need to turn on the AC if his kids don't blow out their birthday candles fast enough