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I have to frame a wall inside my cold storage so that I can insulate it. The cold storage is 5 ft wide and 30 feet long. I cannot frame the wall on the ground and raise it up like I would with plenty of space. In this situation would I just bolt the base plate and the top plate since the entire room is made of concrete and than just screw in the studs 16 in on centre? I also like this method because I can place the sill gasket on both the top and bottom plate. Where if I was raising the wall up it would be hard to place a sill gasket above the top plate.

I would appreciate any advice you may have.

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    Sounds about right - also an ideal situation for steel framing - also no need for 16" studs since it's not structural - 24" should be fine. – Ecnerwal Mar 5 '15 at 19:05
  • Steel studs will completely defeat the point of insulation between then, unless the steel studs are sheathed in foam board or something. – iLikeDirt Mar 5 '15 at 19:17
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    Wouldn't screw the studs - just toe-nail them – CoAstroGeek Mar 5 '15 at 19:20
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I recommend that you should insulate this room like a basement: with rigid foam covering the exposed masonry walls, with the seams and edges sealed off to make it an air barrier. No need to frame anything at all if space is at a premium. I wouldn't frame anyway without rigid foam here, since the thermal bridging of the studs will compromise the insulation (especially steel framing), and a less-than-perfect air barrier will cause condensation on the walls that will drip down and rot out the bottom plate or rust steel studs from the bottom.

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  • I considered using foam but I need strong insulated walls in that room to hold my tankless water heater and bunch of other water treatment equipment. Would my method for framing the walls work? – Lukasz Mar 5 '15 at 19:50
  • Sure it would work, but without air-sealed foam between the concrete walls and the studs, you'll get condensation on the concrete that will eventually rot the walls unless you drywall the studs and perfectly seal the drywall to the floor and ceiling. Just put foam there and your framing idea is fine. But you don't even need to. You could fasten your equipment to a piece of plywood over the foam that you screw through the foam and into the concrete wall with masonry screws. – iLikeDirt Mar 5 '15 at 20:25

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