Tag: thermal control layer

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How to Attach Cladding When Using Continuous Insulation

This post originally appeared on the Green Building Advisor website.

One of the challenges with continuous insulation (CI) is how to attach cladding.  The cladding type and weight along with the type and thickness of the continuous insulation can affect the cladding attachment details.  This blog post will go over a few of the code requirements and discuss how the manufacturers of both the CI and cladding can help with prescriptive code compliance.

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A Crash Course on the Four Control Layers

This post first appeared on the Andersen Windows ProViews Blog.

Shelter is a human necessity.  A place to be warm and dry.  A place to be safe and healthy.  These are the main purposes for every new home that gets built.  As our species has moved out of caves and into, first, stone structures, then concrete and mass wood structures, and finally to what we live in today, our expectations for health and comfort have increased.  We want our homes to stay dry, but not too dry.  Temperatures are expected to be comfortable, and sometime consistent with little variation throughout the home.  The quality of the indoor air should be healthy to breathe.  And we want our investment to last for a long, long time.  A newer expectation is that we do not want to spend a lot of time, effort or money maintaining the structure.

This new, solid stone home has a much different longevity expectation than the traditional wood framed home. Then again, both the cost (about $10,000,000 and time to construct (3 years) are much different than the typical home we build today.

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Where to Locate the WRB when using Continuous Insulation-Inside or Out?

This post first appeared on the Green Building Advisor Website.

Right now, there’s a lot of interest in the residential construction market around continuous insulation (CI) strategies.  CI adds a layer of complexity to a build, and with it, questions.  How much insulation do I need?  How to fasten the insulation?  How to fasten the cladding?  How to integrate windows and doors?  What about vapor control?  And, this question, should the water resistive barrier (WRB) be at the sheathing layer or outboard the insulation?  The answer, it depends, but you have a lot of choices.

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What You Need to Know About Continuous Insulation-Part 2

This post first appeared on the Green Building Advisor website.

In the first part of this continuous insulation blog, we covered building codes and some building science and how they relate to CI.  This second part will discuss some of the difficulties many builders have with how the details work.

I remember my first time using continuous insulation in a new home.  I had many questions; where to put the WRB, how to attach the cladding, how to address the windows and doors, and how much insulation to use.  That home is now more than a dozen years old without any complaints from the homeowner.  Would I change some of the details I implemented on that first CI home?  Absolutely!  But the design and execution all those years ago seems to be performing.

Photo by Armando Cobo

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Rockwool-Not Your 1950’s Mineral Wool Insulation

This post first appeared on the Rockwool R-Class blog.  www.rclass.rockwool.com/blog

If you’ve been in the construction industry long enough, chances are you’ve had to remove an old mineral wool insulation product during a renovation.  I know I have.  It’s itchy, easily falls apart, and it often doesn’t completely fill a cavity bay.  I’ve had many conversations with other builders who will not consider using a mineral wool product because of their past experiences with the older mineral wool insulations.  I can tell you; the old stuff is nothing like modern stone wool.

Itchy, fragile, and does not fill an entire 2×4 cavity bay. This R-7 batt of mineral wool insulation from the 1950’s is much different than the modern stone wool equivalent.

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Construction Design-Wind Washing

Wind: The natural movement of air relative to the planet’s surface.

Washing:  A method of cleaning.

Wind Washing:  Cleaning using air?

Well, not quite.  Wind washing with regards to insulation is the ability of air movement to degrade the effectiveness of an insulation.  We will get to that in a little bit.  First a quick lesson on how fibrous insulations works.

A close-up of Rockwool ComfortBatt showing the fibers and small air pockets.

We use insulation to slow the movement of heat through our building assemblies.  Heat will move in three ways, conduction (heat moving when objects are in contact with one another), convection (heat transferred by moving air), and radiation (heat moving through spaces).  Fibrous insulations forces heat to move through fibers and small pockets of air, which slows heat movement in both radiation and conduction and prevents heat transmission by way of convection. Continue reading “Construction Design-Wind Washing”