Hello all,
I'm in kind of a unique situation. I live on the 1st floor of a old (1895) brick mansion that was converted into 10 condos a while back. Directly below me is the unfinished basement, used for storage, garbage collection, etc. by the entire building. It gets frigid down there during the winters; there's no insulation to speak of. That keeps our first floor apartment particularly cold during the winter months, and our heating bills high.
I've seen a lot of talk about insulating the walls in the basement first, but I feel like that would do no good in my situation. Would it be prudent to insulate the ceilings directly below my floors? Right now, there's basically a couple layers of sheet rock acting as the ceiling in the basement, and between that and my subfloors, there's nothing. There's a ton of pipes, gas lines and wires throughout the basement too along its ceiling. What type of insulation should I go for, and what should I be asking a contractor about?
Thanks in advance for your help. I'm really at my wits end. We're forced to have electric heat because there's no where to vent a gas heater in this old building that's in a historic district. We're doing all we can to keep our heating bills at a reasonable level.
I'm in kind of a unique situation. I live on the 1st floor of a old (1895) brick mansion that was converted into 10 condos a while back. Directly below me is the unfinished basement, used for storage, garbage collection, etc. by the entire building. It gets frigid down there during the winters; there's no insulation to speak of. That keeps our first floor apartment particularly cold during the winter months, and our heating bills high.
I've seen a lot of talk about insulating the walls in the basement first, but I feel like that would do no good in my situation. Would it be prudent to insulate the ceilings directly below my floors? Right now, there's basically a couple layers of sheet rock acting as the ceiling in the basement, and between that and my subfloors, there's nothing. There's a ton of pipes, gas lines and wires throughout the basement too along its ceiling. What type of insulation should I go for, and what should I be asking a contractor about?
Thanks in advance for your help. I'm really at my wits end. We're forced to have electric heat because there's no where to vent a gas heater in this old building that's in a historic district. We're doing all we can to keep our heating bills at a reasonable level.