I have an old 1941 brick Cape Cod house that has never been insulated properly. I've replaced the incredibly drafty multi-pane lead sash weight windows with double-paned Andersens and have been generally pleased with the results, energy $ wise.
But now I want to figure out how best to plug up the incredibly drafty spots. We pulled down the basement paneling to redo the electrical and found the beginnings of what looked like one of the old East-to-West Berlin tunnels and old termite damage. We also found lots of places where the joists rest on the cinderblocks where bugs have been getting in. We figured that out by the number of spider balls and webs surrounding areas where it looks like there's just crushed stone filling the gaps above the cinderblocks.
So, two questions. When there aren't any tell-tale signs like spider webs, how do you determine where the leaks are?
Second, is the blown-in insulation that I've read about for old brick homes with plaster and lathe walls worth the effort? How disruptive is it? Will insulation leak down the walls and into the basement (don't laugh - house was built during the WWII paper shortage so there's no building paper between floors and as vibration and age cause the plaster to disintegrate, it all falls through the cracks in the flooring and into the basement as a very gritty dirt that covers everything.
We first discovered this pulling ceiling tiles down. There was several pounds of the stuff on top of every tile! Anyway, I don't want to shove anything in the walls that's going to make that problem worse. It's about as hard to retrofit building paper as it is to add 1/4" to the stud you cut too short, if you get my drift.
Thanks!
-- Bobby G.