When we last left off on our basement renovation, our wood had just been delivered and we had moved everything out of the basement.

We had a slight delay in getting started {more on that later!} but Mathlete is back at it. His first task was installing the firestops. I’m not hip to all the building code jargon so we’ll let Wikipedia handle that one.
“A firestop is a passive fire protection system of various components used to seal openings and joints in fire-resistance rated wall and/or floor assemblies”

Did you get all that? Yeah, like reading Egyptian right?

Basically, it is material you add in during the building process to help reduce a fire’s ability to spread quickly and/or between floors. It is usually required to some extent by building code and may vary from city to city.

In this picture, do you see the piece of drywall that overhangs the current “wall” of insulation by a few inches? That is the firestop.

Let’s back up a little though.
The first step is to find out the county/city requirements for firestops. Then, buy the required materials. For us, it was drywall.  We bought several sheets of drywall and then measured them to where they would overhang enough for us to build a wall that won’t crush the insulation.

Once Mathlete measured and marked each piece to cut, he checked one last time to make sure his line was straight before cutting.

He cut the drywall using a utility knife.  He scored the back side of the paper and then, snapped it over before cutting the front side.

Once it is cut, you insert so it creates a barrier from the sill plate that sits on the concrete foundation over to the wall that will be built.  This prevents fire from moving up the wall and into the floor up above (i.e. our main level floor).

Here are a few more pictures where you can see how it overhangs the existing insulation.

This has to be installed anywhere there is an enclosed space that goes all the way to the floor.  For us, that will be all but one small area of the basement.

I am so excited to see progress in the basement!