Hello all, first time poster here.

My partner and I will be moving into our new house soon, hopefully closing this week. The house is in no way energy efficient and as we remodel I definitely plan to increase the overall energy efficiency of the home.

I know that just running into a home and throwing insulation all over the place and sealing up this and that can lead to some pretty catastrophic problems in the long run for the home. There is allot to consider and insulating an older home requires careful planning if you want to do it right. With that said I want to start monitoring the home thoroughly inside and out as soon as we move in. Major renovations will not happen in the first year so I can use the first years information as a base line to see how the house performs, if there are problem areas, and most importantly how the readings change once I start making energy upgrades.

I plan to record temperature and humidity in the following places; crawl space, attic, interior wall cavity, exterior wall cavity, between exterior stone work and wall system (if I can get in there), and exterior locations around the home. At first I thought about using a Raspberry Pi, building some sensors and setting it up myself. But then I found a company that sells small wireless sensor tags for not much more than it would cost to build the system myself. The sensor tags relay info to a wireless receiver and upload the info to the cloud where it can be viewed in graph form. Perfect right? This makes it pretty much headache free and worth paying a few more bucks since I cant program code.

Has anyone here done such a thing before? Any positives or negatives I might be missing?

Link to the sensor I'm thinking of buying for this.
http://store.wirelesstag.net/products/wireless-tag-13-bit-temperature-and-humidity

The house in question is a 1950's built single storey, located in Indiana, vented dirt crawl space that has no insulation at all (no bats between joists or anything, water pipes not insulated), attic has minimal insulation, some of the windows are single pane, I have no idea whats in the walls. Once we move in I will be able to look closer at all the area's and determine whats what.

A little info on me, I worked in the fenestration industry in Canada for a number of years. I dealt with both commercial and residential projects, but I leaned more towards high performance windows, worked on a few passive houses, worked on a number of 'very energy efficient' designs with both builders and architects. Spent allot of time looking over wall details and figuring out how to implement our windows into said systems. Figuring out how to tie everything together for maximum air & water tightness, figuring out where in the wall the window needed to be seated, figuring out the proper glazing (LoE coating combinations) needed according to elevation and design of the window itself to maximize efficiency. I typically sold triple pane with 2x coats of LoE, also sold a few windows using quint pane heatmirror (R19 cog) units. I worked on projects as far north as Alaska and as far south as Phoenix. I attended multiple green building and efficient building workshops designed for builders and architects/engineers. I would say my knowledge base is mediocre at best when it comes to green building, but being able to interact with so many in the field and also spending allot of time on job sites has given me a fair understanding of building concepts and practices. I have done some home renovations in the past so I am comfortable doing all the work myself (electrical excluded).

Thank you.

The first thing to do is get a baseline ACH. Insulation is one factor in an efficient house, but air infiltration - measured in Pascals, as in "2ACH50@50 pascals" (2 Air Changes per Hour at 50 pascals) is at least as important. Hire an independent energy auditor to do the test, and have him show you where the leaks are occurring. As you repair the leaks you can often feel the resulting increase in comfort. You seem to be aware that your unvented crawl space needs to be sealed, but it's hard to tell how much work makes sense until you have a tight house and can then judge the value of your insulation.

Posted By Bob I on 26 Jul 2016 01:09

...You seem to be aware that your unvented crawl space needs to be sealed...

I think the OP said vented crawlspace. That seems outrageous, a vented crawlspace in Indiana, with no insulation in the floor? 1950's I guess, they just cranked up the heat. Do you have snow on the ground in January in this part of Indiana?

Yes, I meant the vented crawl space needs to be sealed.

Bob;
Thank you for the heads up. A baseline ACH test is a very important step I had not thought of. I will put that on the list as one of the first things to do.

Jelly;
Yes it seems kind of crazy but that's how it is. It surprised me, and the un-insulated piping surprised me even more. I suspect the HVAC has a duct running into this crawl space to keep the pipes from bursting in winter. But if that's the case then the house is literally pumping heated air outside during the winter due to the multiple vents into the crawl space around the house. Or the previous owner allowed all the faucets to drip throughout the winter, either way there is a significant waste happening. Indiana winters can get rather cold, even though snow typically melts within a few days there is a fair amount of sub freezing days.

I know there has been a lengthy discussion in the forum previously about converting to a "conditioned crawl" so you might try doing a search. There are some specific things to consider (like checking radon for example, among other things).

This bit o' bloggery covers most of the particulars on creating an unvented insulated crawl space.  With or without a rat slab, insulating the crawlspace walls is going to be more effective, reliable, and in the long term more cost effective than trying to keep it vented, insulating at the joists.

IRC 2015 code-min R for crawlspace walls northern IN  (US climate zone 5)  is R15 continuous insulation, and in southern IN (zone 4) its R10 continuous insulation, per TABLE 1102.1.2  (about halfway down the page).  That would be 3" of foil faced rigid sheet polyiso  (zone 5) or 2" (zone 4), or 4" (or 2.5") of EPS.   You can get there with XPS, but it loses performance over time as it loses it's environmentally damaging blowing agents- EPS and polyiso are much more benign.  EPS has the best value proposition in this application, since it doesn't have to be protected from ground moisture, whereas polyiso does.