Insulating Knee Wall Closet

Framing basics for attic knee walls along the sides of your loft or attic space.

Insulating knee wall closet.

We reduced the air leakage nearly 50 on this house in shaker heights without insulating the walls. The disadvantage is that it would be very very hard to reach the desired r value from r 49 to r 60 depending on climate for attic insulation. Blown insulation in the knee wall and top attics. The best materials for the attic and thus the knee wall are spray foam fiberglass and cellulose.

You can buy knee wall doors that have built in insulation and weather stripping. I suggest installing horizontally stacked r 19 unfaced fiberglass batt insulation across the back side anchored to the studs and then covered from roof. 1 use an r value map to determine the amount of insulation you need. Added bonus the floor of this knee wall leaked too so there is a line of foam just above the floor joist.

Insulating this space inside the knee wall improves the energy efficiency of the home and prevents heat transfer from the attic. Insulating and air sealing knee walls unvented version. But you do so at the expense of floor space. We prefer cellulose but we use fiberglass sometimes too.

Knee wall doors provide access through the knee walls to the unconditioned parts of the attic. The advantage here is that your knee wall is probably already insulated this way so it s just a matter of buying some foam so cheap. Kneewalls short walls under sloped ceilings are common in story and a half homes and in bonus rooms above garages. The higher the knee wall the greater the amount of useful wall space you create in your finished attic.

Although kneewalls can help turn attics into living space they often present insulation challenges most builders install fiberglass batts between the studs and some type of blown insulation between the floor joists. A knee wall is a short vertical wall roughly two or three feet high that blocks in that useless triangular space. If the door doesn t have these weather strip it to provide a tight seal and make sure the latch pulls tightly against the frame. Third many side attic knee wall areas are very restrictive in accessiblity and working height.