And the wood siding had lots of gaps behind the siding to channel away moisture that came from the interior. On old houses there was never the attention to moisture control because heating was cheap. He is also in the process of 'remodeling' a finished shop that was built close to 30 years ago - took the interior steel down and there is no plastic on the walls or the ceiling, batt insulation in the walls, blown-in fiberglass in the attic, and there is no sign of mold, mildew, rot, anything anywhere in that building?Īs I understand it, vapor barrier is to keep moisture inside where hvac can deal with it. I was told that will no longer happen once he has plastic up. Then someone told me I have to be careful to not get it TOO tight because they tried that with old houses and the keeping all that moisture in the house was not good?Ī friend of mine is in the process of finishing his shop and has insulation in the walls, but no interior steel yet (and no vapor barrier), and when he runs a heater in there, he gets frost on the inside of the exterior steel. Why not?įinishing the interior of my shop right now and was told to make sure I put plastic on the walls AND ceiling. When we built our house, the insulators put plastic on all the walls under the drywall, which makes sense, but none in the ceiling. My understanding is that they keep the moisture thats in the warm interior air inside, so when the warm temps meet the cold temps somewhere in the wall, there is no moisture in that air and it cannot condensate. I'm perplexed by vapor barriers (cold climate where we are heating all winter).

Wood lathe and plaster wall r value