Tag: Cavity Insulation

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Wood Fiber Insulation-How It’s Made to be Fire and Rot Resistant

Recently, I was invited to a BS and Beer meeting (BS stands for Building Science) at a home under construction near Kansas City, MO.  The meeting featured an installation demonstration of TimberHP’s TimberFill wood fiber insulation.  This new loose-fill wood fiber insulation was being blown into the attic and dense packed into the walls.  Two representatives from TimberHP, Business Development Manager Dan Edelman and Field Education Specialist Matt Damon were on hand to answer any questions and teach the installing contractor the best practices for installing the TimberHP’s loose fill insulation.  Being a new product, there were many questions during the BS and Beer meeting.  The most common where:

Doesn’t wood fiber burn?

What happens if the insulation gets wet?

How do you keep bugs from destroying the product?

Lucky for Dan and Matt, all three questions are answered the same, the product uses borate.  So, what is borate?

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Cavity Only Insulation-A Correction to the 2021 IRC Energy Code

This post first appeared on the Green Building Advisor Website

I recently wrote a two-part article covering the benefits, challenges and code requirements for continuous insulation.  (You can read the articles here and here.)  In the first article, I referenced table R402.1.3 which is found in Chapter 11, Energy Efficiency.  The table shows the R-value and U-factor requirements for several building components and assemblies.  The table data was taken from the first edition printing of the 2021 IRC.  In the article, I stated, “Climate zones 1, 2, and 3 are unique in that they have the option of cavity-only insulation.  Climate zones 4 through 8 all are required to have some amount of continuous insulation.”  A reader on the Green Building Advisor Website, jimmybpsu, pointed out in the comments section of the article that he had a different version of table R402.1.3 which did allow for cavity only insulation in climate zones 4-8.  As it turned out, he was right.

My son Colter installing a R-30 Rockwool Batt.

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Construction Materials-Cavity Insulation

Heat wants to move from someplace hot to someplace cold.  It’s desire to reach equilibrium is one of the principles of the second law of thermodynamics.  We have many methods and materials we use in construction to try to slow this movement.  It’s expensive to condition a space and we want to hold on that space conditioning for as long as possible.  One way we try to slow heat loss or gain is to prevent the wind from blowing through the home.  Another is to shade the sun from beating through a window on a hot, sunny day (in some climates at certain times of the year, the sun can be a blessing).  Insulation is one of the big ones we use to provide comfort to homeowners.

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