An Easy Way to Insulate Your Basement

Energy costs are soaring! Unless there was some way to stop heating your house, there is no way to get around the astronomical rates. Rather, the best way to save on energy costs is to fully insulate your house. The more insulation you have, the less chance heat has to escape. This means you must insulate your basement. This process does not have to be bothersome. My husband and I recently came up with a quick and affective way to insulate our new basement.

When we were first making plans to build a house we had to make a decision on the type of basement walls to pour. The two options we had it narrowed down to were ICF (Insulated concrete forms) and poured concrete walls. ICF basements have a major advantage over standard poured concrete walls. They are extremely energy efficient. The concrete walls are completely surrounded by foam on the inside and out. This means the entire basement is insulated. However, since ICF basements were slightly more expensive, we decided to go with standard poured walls. Everyone has a budget they are working with and our budget insisted on standard poured walls.

Now my husband and I are left with the problem of insulation. We know we lose a lot of heat in the basement, so it is our job to stop that heat loss. Since my husband will be doing most of the work, he wanted to come up with a plan that would save time. The standard way to insulate a basement is to install studs on the walls and fit fiberglass insulation in between. This would be a time consuming project! Instead my husband came up with a better idea.

Although we did not buy ICF basement walls, we decided there is no reason we can’t have foam insulation on our walls. You can buy large sheets of thick foam from any home improvement store. These sheets come in 4×8 sheets. If we use concrete screws to secure the foam sheets to the basement walls we won’t even need to install wall studs. This will save time and money on our insulation project.

Another benefit of using the foam for insulation in our basement is the future of our basement. Eventually we would like to finish our basement and add a couple more bedrooms, a bathroom, and a recreational room. When erecting drywall, we will simply need to screw it to the foam. There will be no need for studs in the future either.

Traditional fiberglass insulation works fine. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to install. Insulating our basement with foam is not only a time saver, but also a money saver for the present and future.