I'm renting a bedroom in a house with very thin walls, and when I wake up every morning, it's freezing, and I imagine that will only get worse. I was thinking it would be nice to come up with some way to add insulation to the cold exterior walls. My problem is: I'm not allowed to drill the walls, and I don't want it to look terrible.
My initial plan was to get some kind of insulation, set it into a lightweight wooden frame, and then stretch some fabric over it to make free-standing insulating panels that look nice and (hopefully) provide some insulation. I do have a few concerns, though, and not enough DIY expertise to know the answers, so I was hoping you folks might help me out.
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Would this even help? If I'm not completely covering the walls, floor-to-ceiling, am I going to see any benefit?
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What material should I use in the frame? I was thinking the appropriate material would be rigid foam, but now after reading up, I'm worried about offgassing, toxic flame retardants, HBCD, CFCs… and many other things I don't really understand. Is there a rigid insulation material that would be safe to use in an interior room as part of a free-standing panel? Polysio? XPS? Mineral wool?
Also, if this is too newbie a question, or if I'm reinventing the wheel, please feel free to close the question or redirect me to a more appropriate resource.
Best Answer
It would help some. Your sensation of cold isn't actually a direct measure of the room temperature, it's a measure of how quickly heat is leaving your body. To test it, put your hand in room tempeature water,(as measured by a thermometer) it will feel colder.
Your body is producing heat, and losing it through contact with air, walls etc
If you slow down that heat loss by insulating the area directly around you, it will feel less cold.
The solution I use, is to put a camping tent on top of my bed when it gets too cold. It's a lot less work than making insulation and a lot more effective. As a bonus you can fill a hot water bottle and really heat up the air around you while keeping out any mosquitoes you may have.