Need Advice - Insulation

[wrogers509]

We are about to insulate the 2nd floor of my SIL home. It was formerly plaster and lath which has been removed and is about to be sheetrocked. It has a barn type roof. The 2X6 roof rafters are actually the outside wall of the 2nd floor. We were going to install air channel along the inside of the roof sheating from the soffits up to where we ventilate into a small attic area. To install the air channel we would have to remove the wood fire stops that are installed where the roof angle changes.

We are having second thoughts about removing the fire stops for obvious reasons.

Can we insulate between the roof rafters and leave out the air channel?

Thanks in advance for any advice!!!!!!

[430752]

hmmm...

If I understand correctly, you're gonna insulate the underside of the roof on the second floor, which is the "attic"? I assume it has been converted to a usable room, and the roof pitch allows for a person to wlak up there. But, the roof is not a wall in the traditional sense, but acts as a wall to the outside?

If I have that right, then I think the air channels will be better than fire stops. The air channels, if done right, improve circulation under the roof so it won't go bad so quickly. the fire channels, while helpful, me thinks are not so important so it is the roof.

for my attic (walk up), which I converted to a tv room, I used those styrofoam Raft-R-Mates, or whatever they're called. they channeled the air up to the ridgeline, where a ridge vent was. However, the raft-r-mates take up like 2 inches of depth, so you don't have a lot of room left for decent insulation. To conquor this, I bought 2x3's and ripped them down to 2x2's. I nailed them up in-line (edge to edge) with the existing rafters (not daughtering them) with a mess of framing nails at different angles (so the addons won't pull out). a nail gun is really useful here. Thus, with the extra 2" of space, I could add decent insulation. I guess I lost a couple inches headroom, but since it was a sloping surface, no big deal.

think about that arrangement.

curt j.