In order to create a quiet, comfortable living space below grade in basements and other lower-level living spaces, it is important for homeowners to understand the types of basement insulation available. That includes basement insulation for foundations walls, concrete floors, ceilings and partition walls. For soundproofing the upper level of the home from noise created in the basement, acoustical and fire-rated batt insulation in the basement ceiling is recommended. …

A great basement-finishing product that insulates and neatly finishes basement walls has taken on a second role as a simple and effective way to insulate and finish vaulted ceilings. It took one imaginative homeowner in northern Ontario to discover this new application for the Barricade system. The beauty of the product is that homeowners can complete projects themselves. The homeowner was researching online to learn how to insulate a vaulted ceiling for his vacation …

Growing up in the west end of Toronto, our three-storey attached Victorian row house had beautiful stained glass windows, spacious rooms and a third floor bedroom large enough to house four children. The basement, however, housed the mountain of coal dumped through the basement window, quarterly, which fed our furnace – that was it! In the early 1950s, people just accepted the fact that basements were dark, dank, wet and only about 6 feet high. Today it’s a different …

Basement insulation, specifically extruded polystyrene (XPS) insulation, is the best basement insulation to use for residential basement construction. Dow Chemical invented XPS insulation, giving it a closed cell structure that proved to be ideal for use in basement insulation projects. There are no holes or voids that would allow water to penetrate. In fact, Dow’s XPS insulation is so waterproof that it is used to make billets for floating docks. Because it has high …