Stair insulation??

[wencington]

Hi all. I am sub floored to my entry and am trying to decide about insulation on stair area. If I continue how I’ve done the rest of floor ( 2x2 with insulation in between) the stairs are going to be tiny by the time I get my finished flooring on. The limiting factor I see is the first step I can’t really extend out of the bus…

Should I abandon insulation on stairs? Any other ideas or handy tricks friends??

[TheHubbardBus]

Good question. One we have yet to address, so this thread interests me.
Our finished sub-floor is 3" thick, so our plan was to raise each step up a percentage of that figure, so we spread the 3" raise across them (possibly in conjunction with a fold-down step addition at the bottom). That leaves plenty of room for insulation on the horizontal surfaces. But the vertical...
I'm thinking this might be a good spot for a limited application of aerogel.

Steps are probably a spot most people don't insulate at all, but I'd think it would make an other-than-insignificant impact.

[wencington]

Hmm. Horizontal or “treads” I think I’m ok. Perhaps I can rip down 2x2 and at heady get half the insulation in there… better then nothing right?

[TheHubbardBus]

Yep. Doing half the steps is 100% better than not doing anything on them. Which may be what we end up doing. Still not sure.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by TheHubbardBus

I'm thinking this might be a good spot for a limited application of aerogel.

Do it!!! I'd love to see somebody put aerogel in their bus.

[TheHubbardBus]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

Do it!!! I'd love to see somebody put aerogel in their bus.

You're the cat that turned me onto it! I never knew it existed before your posts.

There are a couple places I was thinking of using it (window dividers were the first).

Did you come up with any good sources (for small amounts)?

[Rivetboy]

Why not insulate them with rigid foam on the outside of the steps. Box the whole thing in plywood or metal.

[TheHubbardBus]

Originally Posted by Rivetboy

Why not insulate them with rigid foam on the outside of the steps. Box the whole thing in plywood or metal.

I imagine it would help to some extent, but there would still be a direct conductive path from the exterior sheet metal to the metal of the steps.

[Rivetboy]

Not with a 1 1/2" of pink rigid foam sandwiched in there. Metal or plywood for protection of the foam.

[Rivetboy]

It seemed to work for the Coleman ice chest...

[TheHubbardBus]

@Rivetboy,


Maybe we're not talking about the same thing. I may be misunderstanding you and if so I apologize. But if you're saying what I think you're saying, the ice-chest analogy would not work. An ice chest's inner liner is in contact with nothing else other than the insulation surrounding it. So for heat to transfer via conduction, it has to go through the insulation layer... no other path to follow. But if you enclose the bottom of the steps in insulation, making the metal the steps are constructed of the 'inner liner', that inner liner is still directly attached to (it's a part of) the exposed exterior metal of the bus. So heat can conduct to/from the uninsulated exterior directly to the 'inner liner', bypassing the insulation in part.

[ewo1]

Originally Posted by wencington

Hi all. I am sub floored to my entry and am trying to decide about insulation on stair area. If I continue how I’ve done the rest of floor ( 2x2 with insulation in between) the stairs are going to be tiny by the time I get my finished flooring on. The limiting factor I see is the first step I can’t really extend out of the bus…

Should I abandon insulation on stairs? Any other ideas or handy tricks friends??

I was thinking of glueing insulation to the steps inside the bus and covering all with plywood.

Then above all the stairs I was planning on a drop down, insulated floor board to make a floor for the passenger seat.

That way, it is quite insulated, cuts down on the noise and the passenger now has a floor in front of them.

I could probably get away with something like this as RE Amtran have a very wide entry, no like an FE Amtran which is very narrow.
FE Amtran, you better be skinny and have small feet!

[Mercuric Mind]

Areogel, That makes the bus more aerodynamic Right? .

I agree that the steps are one of those areas on the bus that make you scratch your head. I'm not sure how well it's gonna work but I am planning to use killmat sound reducer stick on sheets and then 1/4" foil faced foam, 1/2" underlayment plywood and then flooring. Total height should be ~1 3/8" stack height. My top step will be about 5/8" taller than the rest. Hopefully not a big tripper.

I like the idea of a fold down floor for the co-pilot.

[TheHubbardBus]

Yep. We're doing the fold-down floor/wall divider for the passenger seat as well. Noise mitigation is an added benefit.

Aerogel... isn't that the hair-care product Cameron Diaz swore by in 'Something About Mary'?

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by TheHubbardBus

You're the cat that turned me onto it! I never knew it existed before your posts.

There are a couple places I was thinking of using it (window dividers were the first).

Did you come up with any good sources (for small amounts)?

I first saw it on eBay where people sell 1' x 1' pieces of it. Aerogel has the handy property of costing about $1 per square foot per R-value, but that means using it for my 24' x 7.5' floor to get the same R-10 as my 2" of XPS would cost $1800. And even then I'd only gain 1" of headroom, since even aerogel is only R-10 per inch.

You can apparently make your own aerogel, but it requires basically the same equipment and skill set as meth production so you'd be better off just making a bunch of that.