I have a horrible habit of getting invested in something, learning the skill, then moving on to something else. A few years ago I decided to learn how to build a house.
The design was a 8×12 ft. hut with a loft. Instead of a peaked roof, it uses a sloped roof. The bottom floor has an 8 ft ceiling, and the loft is on 6 in joists with a 3 ft wall height (I think) on the low side and 4ft on the high side. It could be 4 and 5 but I didn’t measure today.
This was built on concrete blocks, so it is not a permanent structure. The loft doesn’t allow you to stand up right, so it isn’t a two story structure. Taxes are weird that way.
Because it was just a hut, I used 2×4 studs for the walls. The children got to pick the window sizes, a mistake on my part. After it was framed and the exterior cladding put on, we wrapped it. I used the rubber waterproofing where required. Then tarpaper for the roof. I built the door out of plywood and then put pine siding on. I think it is called shiplap.
The shiplap was resawn 2×6 because that was lower cost than buying the boards precut.
Then I ran out of money and time. To finish the exterior siding, I need to get the windows installed. I had intended to make the windows from scratch, but that never happened, and I was afraid of $500 window costs. So there the hut sat, used for storage and waiting for more attention.
When we had the new roof put on the house, I asked how much to put a roof on the hut. My roofers did the hut for no extra cost.
I decided to turn the hut into my woodworking shop for the winter. I moved the workbench to the hut, cleared out a bunch of garbage, measured the size of the front window, and got a quote.
The custom window is on its way. Once I have it installed, I’ll finish the siding on that wall. I’ve decided to put T1-11 on the two remaining walls and just cover up the two window openings. No big deal.
This leaves the problem that the hut will be damn cold in the winter. Temps around here often get down to below freezing. I want to be able to work out there.
Enter Rockwool insulation.
This stuff is pricier than old-fashioned pink, but man oh man, what a difference.
Instead of coming in a roll, it comes in 47″ batts. The batts that I purchased fit perfectly between studs on 16-in. centers. The thickness is almost exactly 3.5 inches, so it fits the voids between studs perfectly. For the voids that aren’t on 16″ centers, this stuff cuts easily with a standard knife.
I hate working with fiberglass insulation. I always end up with the itches and little fiberglass splinters. This stuff does create dust, but it is much less than fiberglass, and it doesn’t cause the same itching.
And it is R15; standard Owens Corning Pink is R11.
Just insulating the front wall has dropped road noise to almost nothing. What noise I do hear is coming from the window opening. That opening that is just house wrap now. I expect that to drop as well when we put the window in.
I’m going to be picking up another couple of batts of the stuff to finish out the first floor before doing the loft.
Oh, I have a military heater that I might use; if I don’t use that, it will be a small wood stove.
Rockwool does not burn or melt. Well, at less than around 2000°F. I’m going to put in a heat shield made of 20-gauge steel on 1 in. standoffs. That allows me to get my stove close to the wall. I don’t remember the distance, but 6 in. is what I expect it to be.
I’ll run single-wall flue up to the proper distance from the ceiling, put in an elbow, and then into double-wall flue. I’ll have a double-wall thimble through the wall into a T, then a double-wall flue up to the proper height.
The only issue is that double-wall flue is expensive.