As the fiberglass and paper dry out from the heat you will see
disintegration. The Reflectix is the way to go. Easy to work with
and definitely will keep house warmer .

On Nov 8, 10:55 am, ransley wrote:
On Nov 7, 7:16 pm, "njdilettante" njdilettante@ .com wrote:

This is our first winter in a beautiful 200+ year old house. Unfortunately,
we've already found that the basement is by far the warmest part of the
place! The steam furnace is fairly new (about 5 years), but almost all the
steam pipes running through the basement are bare.

Rather than moving the family down to the basement until spring, I'd like to
insulate the exposed steam pipes. They're definitely iron (some are
rusting), and range about 4-6" in diameter. I made a trip to the box stores
and saw several types of insulation with varying prices.

I don't want to assume that expensive is best, so I'd appreciate some
recommendations.

Thanks ---

Pipe insulation is maybe best and HD doesnt carry it, but I just
insulated a few hundred feet with 24" wide 6" thick fiberglass batts
paper faced, just tie it on with wire, It was cheap and quick. Check R
value of the real pipe insulation, forget bubble wrap its junk. You
might order white, no formaldehyde, encased in plastic, that would be
the cleanest but its a special order.