Insulation Institute Blog

As both a green and custom home builder, Eddie Fort of PD & M Contractors has a client base that is affluent and knowledgeable about energy efficiency.  Fort, winner of the 2015 EarthCraft “Home of the Year,” award, builds shorefront properties in Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, near the geographic center of the state and adjacent to Lynchburg.  At a price point of $750,000 and above, Eddie works closely with his clients to deliver a dream home that includes all the “bells and whistles” you expect with a custom home, which typically means “high end” everything. But for PD & M, delivering energy efficiency and quality doesn’t have to come at a super premium price. In fact, the company insists on spending its client’s money wisely. One area where they achieve that goal is through using hybrid insulation systems – particularly “flash and batt.”

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A Custom Builder’s Approach to Economical, Energy Efficient Insulation

Insulation Institute has been focusing of late on the topic of air sealing and what it takes to construct a home that is airtight using the “3 Ps,”  — People, Practices and Products. Proper air sealing is critical for meeting stringent air change rates required for green building targets such as HERS, Energy Star, Net Zero or Passive House.  While there’s a plethora of guidance available on air sealing from many sources within the building industry, the best guidance to convey to the various contractors involved in home construction can be distilled to this: air seal “like a boss.” That is to say that everyone involved in the construction of that home has a role to play and their role should not be viewed as that of a “jobber” but a “boss” when it comes to air sealing, because getting to stringent targets requires that one think “holistically” versus individually.

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Air Sealing “Like a Boss”

Among the trickier areas to properly seal and insulate is around electrical boxes. These can often be sources of air leakage and are notoriously hard to properly insulate with batt products without excess compression. A new product, box shell, seeks to address both of these problems. As the site shows, the “shell” fits neatly around the electrical box, flush with the sheathing behind and affixed easily with a staple gun. From there, you can just cut a full notch out of a fiber glass batt and install it around the shell, then fill the area between the shell and the box with low expansion canned foam to seal it up. The company, still in its infancy, is offering single, double and triple junction box shells, all for under $2. Using these could help reduce concern that an evaluator, whether a building inspector or HERS rater, will ding you for problems around this typical trouble spot. A couple bucks for that peace of mind is probably worth it.

A New Product to Seal and Insulate Around Electric Boxes

We’ve all seen the technique; it is very common in the building industry. A product manufacturer shows how their product can reduce or eliminate the need for other associated products, typically those that comprise some building system. The approach gets customers to think about costs holistically versus piecemeal. This happens in many industries, but given the complexity and systems-design nature of home construction it is very common in the building industry. The problem is that when multiple new assumptions are introduced into cost analyses you really need to look at the fine print to understand if all the assumptions are legitimate.

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How “Total Cost” Sales Techniques Can Mislead

Energy Efficient homes are in high demand among consumers and are a business imperative for builders who want to remain competitive. Air sealing is critical to achieving energy efficiency.  But, when it comes to air leaks within a home, all points of entry are not created equal. Big holes in a building enclosure are easy to avoid, identify and fix, but smaller holes have proven to be a big problem.  For any building to meet ever more stringent energy efficiency targets, all gaps and openings in a building enclosure should be air sealed.  However, with so many possible air leakage points, and limited time/money to devote to air sealing, builders need to focus on getting the most bang for their air sealing buck.

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Air Sealing’s Top Hits

A new study from Re:Vision Architects draws attention to a common flaw in research of products for the build environment: materials research and product selection typically focus on single-product performance, when very few building assemblies are composed of single products, but rather a combination of products. This simplistic approach led researchers Christopher Lee and Nicole Campion to look instead at the performance of wall assemblies, versus single products.  Their study considered five wall assemblies and the results showed that and double stud wall using fiber glass insulation was among the top performing assemblies.

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Wall Assembly Including Fiber Glass Insulation Proves Peak Performer in New Study

In the first of a two-part series for Builder Online, Owens Corning’s Clarke Berdan details the implications for builders (more choices!) following two sets of code changes approved during the April International Code Council Meeting.  One new change enables builders to use air permeable (fiber glass) insulation in unvented attics. Previously, the lack of approved air permeable insulation options meant builders had one choice: spray foam insulation. The new proposal will allow for four more options. 

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ICC Code Changes Give Builders More Options

In the 1963 film “The Great Escape”, we were rooting for McQueen, Bronson, Attenborough and crew to safely escape the Nazi prison camp. When it comes to air fleeing our homes, our hope is exactly the opposite. Codes and customers are pushing for more energy efficient homes, and that means tighter envelopes. Tighter homes have significant impacts on both moisture management and air quality, but at a more basic level, they are just plain hard to build. A tight home is a result of successfully combining People, Practices and Products (our 3 Ps of air sealing) to deliver the desired result. Executing requires diligence from multiple subs, at many stages of a build, typically employing multiple products, both air barrier materials and sealing accessories. This complexity begs the question: how do I prioritize my focus (and my money) to attack the biggest problems first?

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“The Plate Escape”: where you’re leaking the most air

Moisture is one of the most damaging elements a building can encounter and is the leading cause of construction litigation. In a recent post for Professional Builder Magazine, Johns Mansville Principal Building Scientist J.R. Babineau talks about the role insulation plays in managing moisture in a wall system and why the issue is becoming increasingly important as energy codes become more stringent.

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Why Insulation is Crucial for Moisture Management

Back in March, we wrote about the wide array of insulation and air sealing approaches used by homes that meet DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) specification. Among the approaches that can work is the use of fiberglass batts. Mutual Housing California demonstrated how to use batts to achieve ZERH certification in their Mutual Housing at Spring Lake development in Woodland, California. This 62 unit project was the first multifamily, affordable rental development to receive ZERH recognition. However, getting that performance level with batts requires acknowledging a basic fact: the product can get you the performance, but only if the installation is up to snuff.

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Zero Energy Ready Homes…Using Fiberglass Batts