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Investigating Insulation

Filed under: Insulation, Energy saving measures
09:34 am - March 21, 2008

Photo: Investigating Insulation

We had to take down the walls in the old section of the house to redo wiring and plumbing. It shouldn't be a surprise that a house built mostly from recycled materials should have continued its patchwork approach for the insulation too. So a run of fiberglass batt insulation morphs suddenly into solid foam and back to batts a few feet later. In some places the solid foam is 2", other places just 1". I found a fork in one spot, left over from a working lunch, I guess.

Bruce Torrey from Building Diagnostics (buildingdiagnosticshelp.com) showed up recently to do a walkthrough and help us figure out the best insulation to use since we've got a mix of old and new construction. Brief background—among other things, he trains insulation contractors, builders and others on various green building issues. Unlike some folks who've looked at our house, he didn't say, "You should have torn down this thing and started from scratch." I don't think the funkiness threw him a bit.

What we come up with is likely to be as patched together a group of insulation methods as Kim and Philippe employed. We're leaving as is the fiberglass batts and solid foam boards that are already in place. We're going to add some Thermax rigid board insulation to the inside walls of our old basement (it doesn't need to be sheetrocked over; you just glue it into place). Plus we'll probably use UltraTouch recycled denim insulation in some straightforward walls.

For the ceiling and some walls where it would be difficult to get the denim batts to fit very tightly, Bruce suggested we blow cellulose. For our purposes, it would work well and be significantly less expensive than either open or closed cell foam. He recommended David Evans at Renewal Energy Services (renewalenergyservices.com), an insulation contractor who recently did some Habitat for Humanity houses in this area. David came by today to scope out the job, and should have quotes within the week.

© The Green Guide, 2008

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Foam insulation is environmental?
posted by Alphastream on 2008-05-07 21:16:23  

I greatly appreciate the difficulty of selecting the best insulation; I just went through this myself. However, I have the benefit of working with the very chemical companies that make the foam insulation.

Made from fossil fuels and requiring large amounts of additional energy to manufacture, foams also are made up of hazardous chemicals. I've been to facilities that make the stuff. Nasty!

I recommend instead using Cellulose. It has almost all the insulation benefits of foam, but none of the chemical and energy issues. I've used blue jean insulation. It is a good product, but suffers from the air leakage of all batt insulations. Fiberglass is, as you probably now, full of undesirable qualities. Go cellulose!


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