The Importance of Insulating Kitchens and Baths – Part I
Most people simply don’t realize how important it is to insulate exterior walls of kitchens and bathrooms. Good insulation helps, in more than just one way, but the most important part of why insulation is so important and the walls of kitchens and bathrooms is because it can help prevent pipes from freezing in the cold winters here in Washington DC. We’re currently right in the middle of a very cold winter.
As a side note, it’s really interesting, from a logical perspective, how people’s values change, depending on what’s most prevalent in their current consciousness. In the same way that people buy more groceries when they go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, while building in the summer people often don’t pay as much attention to preventing freezing pipes. It’s just simply isn’t what people think about the most, when they’re in the middle of a scorching hot summer. Instead, they often focus more on other things like the location and air flow for air conditioning / HVAC system diffusers and or mitigating thermal gain from fenestration.
We’re not condoning absent-minded building practices, we’re just saying that sometimes people don’t pay as much attention to protecting pipes from freezing as they should, when they have the optimal opportunity. That optimal opportunity happens to be during the rough-in stage of construction. Unfortunately, that window of time, in the rough-in stage, generally happens very quickly. The insulation actually happens after rough-in inspections, but before the installation of drywall. After piping rough-in is complete, once it’s been approved and inspected, the insulation has to happen very quickly because almost invariably, everyone pushes the drywall to start as quickly as possible.
A picture of packaged fiberglass batt insulation follows below.
The drywall installation stage of most construction projects happens to be on the critical path of a schedule. This means that any delays in drywall installation will directly impact the project’s overall completion date. Because the other construction disciplines, like painting, tile, and finish carpentry depend on the finished drywall surface before that specific respective work can even begin, the drywall installation is considered to be on the critical path of the schedule, in most projects. That means it’s like a bottleneck.
Any extra time spent before drywalling creates a ripple effect throughout the schedule. It’s generally also counterproductive to break up the drywall so that it’s done in specific areas only. It’s generally more productive to clear the building, or the areas of renovation from all other types of work and just focus on nothing but drywall, during drywall installation. For all these reasons, the insulation phase of most projects is generally rushed.
It’s an important part of the long-term building quality though and we emphasize insulating properly and even going above and beyond. We consider it a best practice because although insulation alone can’t prevent pipes from freezing, it can still help. And when pipes freeze to the point that they break, the ensuing flooding of the house can cause massive damage and inconvenience.
People should simply put more time into their construction schedule, especially for important things like this, but again and again, developers and house flippers and sometimes even good builders, will rush the insulation stage of their projects. Again, we’re not condoning cutting corners in any way. In fact we’re particularly writing this article to highlight the importance of good insulation and quality control, at the right time, before drywall is installed.
Many of our clients have had frozen pipes inside of wall cavities that were built many decades ago. Unfortunately, at the time that many of these buildings were renovated, contractors didn’t care much about insulation. The building code today is very clear, exterior walls need to be insulated. But there’s more than one way to insulate an exterior wall and there’s good and proper techniques that can really help.
One of those simple techniques is simply installing the piping closer to the tempered side of the cavity and installing insulation between the exterior and the piping. That might sound really obvious, but it’s not something that all contractors do and or care about. Most contractors don’t care about quality control and or don’t have particularly robust quality control systems in place to check these kinds of details.
The picture below shows a kitchen, of a rental unit, where pipes froze and resulted in flooding of the house. This particular escape of liquid event, a leak, led to these walls being opened up for the first time in many years. Although the project had to happen very quickly, like most, in this case to get the tenants back to their living space as soon as possible, we took time to insulate this wall very well to reduce the chance of these pipes freezing again in the future.
Unfaced fiberglass batt insulation has been used inside of the cavity of the wall and additionally, closed cell pipe insulation has been applied around the water lines. These water lines are installed inside of the middle of the cavity, but the insulation has been installed on the untempered side of those pipes to keep the pipes insulated well from the exterior, not from the remainder of the inside of the house.
Dupont Kitchen & Bath Can Help
As dedicated and local DC metropolitan kitchen and bath builders and installers, we pride ourselves on turning your visions into reality. Your kitchen and bathrooms can reflect your unique style and be designed with personalized aesthetics. It can be a process from creative designs to the realization of your dream space. Specializing in kitchen and bath construction, we bring expertise and skills to every project. If you’re contemplating a renovation, upgrade, or modernization in the local market, we’re happy to be your team. Consult with us, and we can start together on a path to redefine and elevate your DC living experience.
You can visit our company website at https://dupontkitchenbathdc.com/
Here at our website you will find a simple and convenient web form that you can fill to contact us quickly.
