How can I close this large, uneven gap between wall and ceiling?

Question

How can I seal off this uneven gap between a concrete ceiling with concrete beams under it and a wall perpendicular to the beams?

I mainly just need to stop cold air blowing through. There is about a foot between the top of the wall and the bottom of the beams, and the beams are about a foot tall, so about two feet between the top of the wall and the ceiling.

One side of the wall is a hallway, the other side a storeroom. Both sides have a sprinkler pipe hanging from rods attached to the sides of the concrete beams. There is 4.5" between the sprinkler heads and the bottom of the beams.

Answer 1

What's probably most typical as a proper approach for the illustrated situation is to put a ceiling on the room, (and/or hallway) below the structural concrete beams/slab. Quite possibly with insulation above the ceiling. Looks better and stops cold drafts. If cold drafts come from the other side of the wall, I have to suspect that the entire beam/slab structure above is also cold, so insulation would be good.

If you are actually going to attempt to fill the gaps between the beams and extend the wall upwards to the ceiling, what you can do probably depends on the occupancy or location - spray foam might work, or might work to fill gaps around other materials, since 2 feet is a lot of spray foam, and might also be a fire code violation out the wazoo in many places with that type of "not your typical single-family house" construction. Then you just end up at the land of "cut and fit" with suitable fire-resistant materials you can actually use wherever this is, such as drywall or autoclaved aerated concrete

Answer 2

Ignoring fireproofing, because currently there is none... I'd go with the "make the wall taller" option. Since the drywall was painted without any mud on the screws, and considering the "industrial" setting, let's go with "not too ugly, but still quick and dirty" solution.

If the drywall is just "flapping around" and the wall is connected to the ceiling via studs that are out of frame in the picture:

Get some plywood/OSB/planks, cut to width of about 20cm and length "long enough to fit behind the drywall but not too long". Insert behind drywall, and drive in the drywall screws, so the existing drywall will serve as support to hold the piece of wood behind it. The new drywall will be screwed onto this piece of wood, so it will be aligned with the old one.

Next put a drywall stud on the ceiling, fastened to the beams, right above the wall (use a straight edge) and screw some drywall sheets on both sides.

If the wall has a horizontal "stud" inside at the top to hold it together: forget about the planks, screw another stud horizontally on top, and install drywall between it and the ceiling.

You'll have to cut the drywall sheets to match the shape of the beams on the ceiling if you want it to be draft proof. It's either that, or you make a flat ceiling so you don't have to cut the walls around the beams.

Once this is done, you should have a bit of space between the drywall and the beams, because it's not possible to have a tight fit. You can fill it with mud, or just blow some expanding foam in the cavity between the two drywall sheets. Mud is likely cheaper.

Answer 3

Cutting around the uneven ceiling, conduits, and other stuff above the wall would result in hundreds of cuts, regardless of the material used. Trying this with any solid material (drywall, rigid foam, etc.) would have taken a long time.

I ended up using Everbilt Double Reflective Insulation Radiant Barrier and Protecto Super Stick Building Tape. I was able to quickly make all the cuts with scissors. The liner on the tape was split down the middle, so I was able to tape the top and bottom of the foil on the ground and remove the other half of the liner once it was cut and in place.

Answer 4

You could try using rigid foam insulating board. Cut/notch it to fit between the beams and the wall top. A merge of these two installations: