insulation

 Healthier Spray Foam Insulation: The Green Cocoon installer spraying foam insulation to enhance a building's energy efficiency. The Green Cocoon uses a spray foam that substitutes some carbon-producing ingredients with soy-based ones.

New mixtures for spray foam insulation successfully uses healthier ingredients in a construction staple that is already widely accepted as fairly green. Spray foam insulation has been applied in many types of building projects. Chosen primarily for its excellent insulating and sound-dampening qualities, spray foam is a big player in achieving LEED Points by reducing the demands for heating and cooling thus reducing energy consumption. The benefits of this product outweigh the negative points associated with spray foam, most notably the oil that is mixed with a foaming catalyst to produce it. Traditionally, spray foam is made with petrol-based oil, which, of course, is a large contributor of carbon. It is seemingly a necessary evil: not a 100% green option, but the best option available.

Heightening the competition in the green product arena foam producers are using “a soybean based polyol that can replace the conventional petroleum-based polyols [and] help the polyurethane industry become less dependent on imported mineral Crude oil” (http://www.biobasedtechnologies.com/). See my “simple duck” references below for definitions! The percentage of soybean-based substitution currently varies by manufacturer but could be upwards of twenty percent when combined with renewable and recycled materials.

This smart substitution method should act as a model for other companies that produce materials consumed by the construction industry. Investing in research and working towards higher standards of sustainability can only pay off in the end as more building projects demand the healthiest, most eco-friendly products from businesses that strive to uphold responsible practices.

“Simple Duck” terminology (as promised, which I needed in order to write about this):

What is a polyol?

A polyol is a sugar alcohol. Polyol molecules can be chained together using certain chemical procedures to produce polyesters. Soybean-based polyols have been used as a petrol-substitute to manufacture parts of farm vehicles like John Deere tractors. (Deere & Co.)

What does the polyurethane industry produce?

Varnish, skateboard/rollerblade wheels, furniture and car seat foam. Maybe these will be the next products to get a boost of green-esteem from the diverse soybean.

This article was written by Suzanne O'Leary. If you have questions or comments regarding this article, please feel free to contact us through our website: http://www.thinkdwell.com

Part 4 of our 15-part Q&A series on all aspects of green building from the publishers of HealthyHouseInstitute.com. Click here for the introductory post and furthur details.

Question: We’re considering building a house with steel framing. Does it have any particular advantages?

Answer: Light-weight steel framing is becoming popular with some builders. It consists of C-shaped studs and channels that are usually lighter-in-weight than wood. Everything is held together with self-tapping screws, and the studs typically have holes prepunched in them for electrical wires and plumbing lines. This saves drilling time, but the holes have sharp edges, so they must be fitted with plastic grommets to prevent plastic-jacketed wiring from getting nicked and shorting out. Steel framing is also very uniform in size, it has no knots, and it won’t warp.

The biggest health-related advantage to steel is the fact that it never needs to be treated for termites. So, where toxic chemical use is the norm, or where less-toxic alternative treatments aren’t feasible, steel is a great option.

Although it’s not a concern for most people, some very sensitive individuals are bothered by the natural odor of wood, and steel is odor-free. Most framing lumber is pine or another softwood, and the odor is composed of the same chemicals in turpentine. These sensitive people are just reacting to much lower levels of the same pollutants that have the potential to bother all of us.

Insulation Problems

Recently I bought a camera that can see whether and where a home is insulated. This camera is so cool! It overlays visible-light and infrared images (no, you can't see through anything) and it has a 5-inch display. It can detect temperature differences of .07 degrees centigrade, yes seven hundredths of a degree! In addition, I can burn a report to CD using my tablet PC.

I became interested in infrared technology for building science applications after I'd talked to the fourth or fifth person who spent many thousands of dollars replacing all their windows with dual pane models, yet saw almost no difference in energy use. That's most likely because their walls have no insulation. In California, builders large and small didn't insulate walls until recently. We don't have extreme temperatures so insulating anything but the attic was considered unnecessary.

In most homes, only 25% of the wall space is dedicated to windows. And dual pane windows reduce heat loss by just 30 to 50%. Each standard-size window costs about $400 installed so that's an extremely poor cost/benefit ratio. They do make your home less drafty and more quiet, but reduce your energy use? Hardly, when your walls are not insulated. One woman I spoke to had spent almost $30,000 to replace her old windows. The sad thing is, she's disillusioned and may not install any more energy efficiency upgrades.

I'm not sure which energy agency it was, but one of them estimated that over half the California homes built before 1960 still have no wall insulation. Many others have been remodeled, and perhaps an addition got insulated. But with our homes changing hands so often, we don't have much reliable information.

I can say for sure that adding insulation is surprisingly reasonable (please note I have no interest in any insulation company). For saving money, it probably beats any other energy upgrade you could install. Our built environment does as much damage as our cars, greenhouse gas wise, and now we can confidently go about solving the problem. I'm so excited this technology made it out of the military and into our hands! For that, I've been told we have a bunch of guys from Honeywell to thank.

Ho-Ho-HO!

Lorna Fear
Certified Green Building Professional (Advanced)

2008 is fast approaching, and the team at GetWithGreen.com is stopping now to recognize a few of our favorite eco-friendly home improvement products for 2007. These products are assembled together under one roof: GetWithGreen.com’s 10 Best Green Home Remodeling Products for 2007.

GetWithGreen.com’s 10 Best Green Home Remodeling Products for 2007 consists of manufacturers (or categories) who deliver eco-friendly products, which make our planet a greener place. These products help us conserve, help us reuse, help us recycle, or help us become less reliant on existing harmful resources. We also looked heavily at the popularity of these products with you, our readers.

Let’s give a GetWithGreen.com Thumbs up to our 10 Best Green Home Remodeling Products for 2007:

1) Cyber-Rain – “The smartest, greenest, and easiest irrigation system on the planet.”

sprinkler cyberrainThe Cyber-Rain XCI System caused quite a bit of stir at GetWithGreen.com in 2007. It was one of the most widely read stories, and for good reason. Resetting the sprinkler timer at every change of season, or for un-seasonal weather changes, just isn’t practical – and we don’t do it! Instead we just let our sprinklers turn on when it is not necessary, and we waste our most precious resource. The Cyber-Rain XCI System made it to our list because it automatically adjusts our sprinklers depending on the weather forecast, thus greatly reducing water usage, and...

Read the other winners at www.GetWithGreen.com

Thermal imagers have been used by the military and manufacturing facilities for a long time. Recently, they've been refined and specialized for building science applications and I just bought one. It's loaded with report software and using my laptop, I can burn a CD real time.

These imagers reveal temperature anomalies so you can see where a building leaks or is infiltrated by air and where it traps moisture. Having this information is crucial if a homeowner is going to make improvements in the right order. There is definitely a correct order for some projects. Here's an example.

Have you heard the horror stories about dual-pane windows? In the Q&As that follow my talks on How to Go Green without Going Broke, I certainly have! People are spending $15,000 and more to replace all their old windows, without getting more than a two-dollar reduction in energy bills.

Dual panes can't save energy unless your walls are insulated (this doesn't apply if you live in a fishbowl/Eichler). They can make rooms less drafty and quieter, but the warm air will still find its way out the uninsulated walls, like it always has. NOTE: replacing a window with dual panes reduces that window's heat loss by 50% or less. And because windows typically account for only 25% of a wall, the cost/benefit ratio is not that attractive.. As part of a whole house upgrade or new construction, dual panes make a lot of sense -- and they're the law. But before you decide to replace all your windows with dual pane products, determine whether and how well your home is insulated.

Until recently, that's been difficult to do. Now, a thermal imager can show you where and how badly your home leaks. You can also identify areas of potential mold growth. Some pest control companies are using them now, because thermal imagers can detect the presence of termite nests as well.

My hands have been on this keyboard for 100s of hours now, researching these last details of our house. Since most of the materials, applications and fixtures are not normally used in residential applications, I've had to swim through oceans of information to find these items with the help of my architect. Jan says that most of the residential norms are crap, so we HAVE to research every little corner and crevice for the ultimate THING. Most of the stuff we want has primarily been used in the commercial sector or green building, and as Ted says, it's because those things are built to last and simply are better (sigh!)... so here we go, I am freakin' tired, but am grateful that the Internet was invented in my lifetime.

First, insulation. Yes, we are using SIPs for most everything. But because our 2nd story cantilevers (overhangs) out above our pool, we have to use something other than our beloved SIPs. So, Ted suggested using batt on the floor of our 2nd story overhang to save money, but now I want to look at this natural fibre insulation that's safe, environmental because their made with post-industrial waste (recycled blue jeans!) and they are good quality for not too much money. The advantage is that even though they are more expensive per square foot ($0.39/sf batt insulation vs. $0.89-1.09/sf natural fibre insulation), you will save in labor costs because batt has to be stapled in and handled with care because of the itch and fiberglass irritation. This stuff can be put in by hand and don't need to be stapled in, so they are quickly installed and safe to handle as you can see with the baby below.

I found this company:
Bonded Logic at http://www.bondedlogic.com/

I couldn't resist posting this adorable photo:

Then on to ventilation ducts. We learned of a system that removes humidity from our bathrooms that can be planned with fewer punctures through our roof because they share the same vent to the outside. They are quieter & better designed so that you can control 2 or more bathrooms with the same ventilation duct....MORE HERE

My husband Jan found this interesting paper on using foliage plants to remove pollutants from air-tight energy efficient homes that will be useful to many of us homeowners. It is important for the house to not only be eco-friendly and energy efficient, but to also be healthy. Even though our foam SIP walls (EPS sandwiched between 2 OSB boards) won't offgas, the furniture you may have can "leak" formaldehyde and other pollutants. Plants are a beautiful and economical way to cleanse the air of your house.... MORE HERE

Why: Heat rises, so near your ceiling the air is probably the warmest in your house (good reason for slow circulating fans in high ceiling houses, but that's another topic). If there's an attic above your ceiling it's probably a major conduit of heat loss in winter. Adding insulation to your attic is said to be one of the most cost-effective energy saving investments you can make. Typically the attic will also get very hot in summer, so insulating it will also greatly reduce cooling problems in summer.

My project: Soon after buying my 32 year old house in 1999, I realized the attic insulation was pathetically inadequate. This house has roof trusses and the original builders simply put a few inches of loose mineral (rock) wool in the spaces between the 2x4 rafters. 32 years of settling and blowing around left the remains of the rock wool in very scattered condition. Many spots were bare -- you could look right at the gypsum drywall of the ceiling below!

Extensive remodeling in this house involved new and replaced wiring, recessed ceiling lights, bathroom fans, etc. etc. that required much climbing around in the attic, over the rafters, displacing and replacing insulation. Obviously, I had to finish all those big projects before adding more inches of insulation in the attic. Therefore it was summer of 2002 before this job got done.

Choosing the method of adding insulation was easy. I wanted to leave the few inches of rock wool there -- it would be nasty to remove and why waste it? So, by far the quickest and cheapest method was to add more blown-in loose insulation. Recycled cellulose, made from old newsprint I think, with flame and bug retardent chemicals added, was the clear choice. You can actually rent machines to do this, buy the bags of material, and do it yourself. But it was cheap enough to hire a professional and I'm glad I did. They knew how to seal off the attic from living spaces below, had more powerful blowing machines than you can rent, and knew how to get even coverage. And it's a really dirty job.

The two fellows came one morning, did the whole attic and were gone by noon. I had about 1700 sq. feet of attic area, to which they added 6+ inches of blown cellulose for total cost of $668. The R-value of what they added is ~23, so my total ceiling R-value now is probably close to the recommended 30 for this area. I now have between 7-8 inches covering the entire attic.

cellulose blown insulation

Energy savings:I averaged my natural gas usage in therms for the 6 highest heating months (Oct - Mar) of 2000-2005 -- two winters before and three after attic was insulated. The average savings after insulating was 330 therms for the 6 heating months, approximately 1/3 of the total usage for those 6 months of the year (980 before, 650 after). Natural gas was pretty cheap in 2002-3, a little over $.50/therm, but has approximately doubled since then, though it spiked higher in 2005-06, it has come down a little since then. But at then current rates, my insulation project paid for itself in the beginning of third winter (fall '04-winter '05). At present gas price, the project would have paid for itself in the second winter.

depth approx 7-8"

Here's a question from Kim B.: 

Saw your program for the first time on straw and blue jean insulation.  I
will be a regular viewer now.  Is anyone doing anything with wool as insulation?

Thank you.