Rigid foam insulation is the solution.
Rigid foam attic knee wall.
I think the rigid material will do a better job with air sealing and will stay intact longer.
Wondering how you can make your knee wall space insulated correctly.
A knee wall is a short vertical wall roughly two or three feet high that blocks in that useless triangular space.
Rigid foam insulation is innovative eye pleasing and super effective.
First you will want to add traditional insulation between the studs this can be batt insulation spray foam or even rigid foam insulation.
The advantage here is that your knee wall is probably already insulated this way so it s just a matter of buying some foam so cheap.
How to insulate knee walls.
I d prefer to see a rigid material on attic kneewalls.
An insulated kneewall is effectively an exterior wall so you ll need a layer of rigid foam drywall osb or thermoply on the back side of the kneewall to prevent cold air from degrading the performance of the insulation.
It easily expands with graphite infused right into the foam while we air seal the edges to provide the full maximum insulation.
We reduced the air leakage nearly 50 on this house in shaker heights without insulating the walls.
Both can be done poorly of course and i ve seen both done poorly.
Blown insulation in the knee wall and top attics.
Here are the three keys to sheathing an attic kneewall properly.
Added bonus the floor of this knee wall leaked too so there is a line of foam just above the floor joist.
Cover the whole wall.
We prefer cellulose but we use fiberglass sometimes too.
This method of insulation won t work if the triangular attic includes ducts or plumbing pipes.
Seal all the edges penetrations and seams.
The disadvantage is that it would be very very hard to reach the desired r value from r 49 to r 60 depending on climate for attic insulation.
Install a continuous air barrier on the exterior side of the attic knee wall framing with a rigid air barrier or other supporting material to prevent the knee wall cavity insulation from sagging and to create a continuous thermal barrier.
But you do so at the expense of floor space.
The higher the knee wall the greater the amount of useful wall space you create in your finished attic.