Insulation II

2024-05-17

Happy Friday everyone! The majority of insulation is in and we’re onto drywall! It feels quieter and warmer in the house already.

We’ve gone with batt insulation, R24 or R28 depending on wall thickness, spray foam in select areas as needed for continuous air barrier / cold floors, and blown-in insulation in roof cavities. Thermal resistance and air tightness are key factors. Cost, availability and carbon also come into play.

After concrete, insulation can impact the embodied carbon in a home - up to 20% for typical new builds. There are lots of tools out there for comparing products. EC3 is the most widely used by design professionals, but not the easiest for a layperson to compare standard products in equivalent terms. Builders for Climate Action just released their BEAM Estimator v1.1 which is an excellent design tool/database if you want to look at all materials in a building and drive down carbon impact upfront.

For insulation, I like this easy to digest summary put together by the team at Efficiency Vermont (full report linked here). In short, materials that contain carbon or require less energy to produce have the lowest (best) climate impact. At the other end, materials with high-GHG refrigerants have the worst climate impact.

In our house you will find: Low-carbon fiberglass batts and blown insulation from SaintGobain CertainTeed. Both contain significant pre/post recycled content glass (30-50%) and use plant-based instead of formaldehyde binders. Open cell spray foam made with HFO blowing agents, from Huntsman. Substantially lower climate impact than HFCs found in conventional spray foams, which are fortunately starting to be phased out. GPS from Airform for rigid insulation of our foundation walls (see March 1/2024 post). Better R-values per inch than EPS and altogether lower embodied carbon than XPS, a more commonly used rigid foam product.

With insulation in and drywall underway, we took the opportunity to put together a family time capsule! A fun and thought-provoking process. Here’s hoping someone finds this down the line, but not for a good 75-100 years+!

#netzero #netzerohome #greenbuilding #sustainability #insulation #greenhousegases #lowcarbon #embodiedcarbon #gwp #timecapsule

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#northvannetzero