# Best loose fill insulation to use in a small spot without needing a blower?



## Studly (Feb 27, 2009)

I have a small spot on the wall in our house's entry way where it is much colder than the other areas. It's about 16" wide by about 2 feet tall, so the builder must have missed putting insulation in that part of the stud bay.

What is the best loose-fill insulation to use to fill that small spot, while keeping the hole in the wallboard as small as possible? I was hoping to not have to rent a blower for such a small spot to fill.

I see that my local Menard's sells a shredded styrene insulation, which is more commonly used in cement blocks, and a "Shake and Rake" fiberglass insulation that needs no blower. Would either of these work or is there a better option?


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## mako1 (Jan 7, 2014)

Anything you can get in the hole will work.You could fill it with a couple bags of vermiculite from HD 's garden center.That is what they fill blocks with and will go into a small hole.


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## hthome (Feb 25, 2015)

Just cut out the whole bay. You wont see if you get a good fill if you try to cut a 2 inch hole and fill by hand. Cut it out install a fiberglass batt, repair sheetrock. Job well done.


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## mako1 (Jan 7, 2014)

I have to agree with that.If you have the have the ability to do it.
I answered the question asked.


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## hthome (Feb 25, 2015)

Yeah sorry not the question that was asked but it's the best solution to the problem. Also if you are unable to tape and finish the 16" x 2' patch your 2" hole is going to look just as bad. Both scenarios are cheaper than renting a blower. On another note I would call your builder and have him fix it if it is a new house. Use one of those scopes that mechanics use to look inside the wall cavity before you cut it out if you can get one, that or an IR camera or IR thermometer. Those would be helpful in determining if your insulators missed anything else. If you had fiberglass batts installed when built we get paid piece rate per Sq Ft normally. Crappy pay generally makes for crappy work, especially in bigger companies. just FYI


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## Studly (Feb 27, 2009)

Yeah, the house was built about 30 years ago and we're not the original owner, so can't go back to the builder to fix it. 

Thanks for the tips everyone. I'm not very experienced at mudding, so it seems like covering up a small hole would be easier than cutting out a big rectangle and mudding all those seems. But I do want to do it right, so maybe it's time I learn and practice.


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## Studly (Feb 27, 2009)

Just an update to my original post, with an IR thermometer I actually marked out the cold spot on the wall. It's actually much narrower than I thought. It's only about 5 inches wide by about 3 feet tall, so it's probably just a partial stud bay and the builders couldn't fit a roll in there, so they just skipped over it.

Seeing how the area is so narrow and putting a roll of fiberglass insulation in there, wont work, shall I just go back to the original plan on making a hole at the top and dropping in some loose fill insulation?

Another idea I had for loose fill insulation is to take some XPS foam board scraps I have and cutting them up into tiny chunks and dropping that in. Would that be better than any of the other alternatives mentioned earlier?


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