Erik sent me an email asking if anyone had considered Arogel insulation for a tiny house? I personally had not heard of it before so with Eriks help did a little investigation. If you are not familiar with it I’ll give you a small overview and than you can decide if this might be an option when you build your own tiny house.
Here is a brief description: Nicknamed “frozen smoke,” aerogel is extremely lightweight material, with a density only 3 times that of air. Only a small fraction of a volume of aerogel is the material itself. Most of the volume is filled with air. This makes aerogel an excellent insulator. (Aerogel provides nearly 40 times the insulation of fiberglass insulation.)
It is very expensive so has not made a big move into the building industry. NASA and other high tech companies have used it extensively up to this point.
A company called Themoblock is one company trying to bring it to main stream construction. Thermablok material is available both in sealed strips for stud insulation, and in bulk roll form.
Thermablok’s thin 1/4″ (6.35mm) profile allows it to fit between framing and sheathing without altering standard construction. It is applied in strips with a peel-and-stick adhesive backing or staples. It can be customized to fit on headers, rim joists, corners, rafters, window flashing and other hard to insulate areas. This makes ThermaBlok aerogel insulation an effectively universal solution for enhanced insulation value in any building partition.
Thermablok’s space age core component is an aerogel composite material that is over 90% air, making it a highly effective insulator. It has the lowest thermal conductivity of any solid material (0.0078 Btu/ft-hr-F).
In Thermablok, aerogel and micro fibers have been engineered into an extremely strong, durable, thin and flexible insulation material that is up to eight times more efficient than traditional insulation.
Architectural Team Looks to Win Department of Energy Competition
Using Thermablok™ Aerogel Insulation
When students from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and the University of Santa Clara, California began preparing for the competition, they approached Thermablok™ President and founder Lahnie Johnson for information regarding energy-conserving Thermablok aerogel insulation.
You can read more about this insulation by following these links below.
Wow, this looks like it has potential to be a great insulation alternative for yurts if costs come down.
http://coloradoyurt.com/yurts/yurt_custom_features/insulation/index.php
I’ve worked with aerogel for industrial applications in the last 20 years but the hurdle to jump is cost. Unless this has made a dramatic decline in cost, it is price prohibitive in homes as a practical solution for insulation. It does merit further research as a heat solar transfer medium.
Arlos- I posted a reply already, but you always seem to be a repository of knowledge. Our 10×12′ cabin in the woods- very isolated- was handcrafted in native sugar pine- hand sawn at a local private mill. The woodwork is beautiful but there are huge gaps in the sheathing-no interior drywall or “fancy” stuff. The exposed wood is lovely, but as the wood has aged LARGE gaps have become permanent and make the season much shorter due to the cold at that altitude (7,300 ft) and no heating source. We are looking into wood-burning marine stoves to install, but some kind of “chinking” needs to be done. Any good ideas that can be applied by regular folks- no contractors want to drive 45 minutes up a terrible lumber road! Susan McReynolds
There is always triple expanding foam which is moisture resistant and can be shaped once cured. this can be applied on the inside and there are several flexible chinking manufacture of the market.
I re-chinked my sisters log home about 30 years ago in Idaho with traditional materials. Never again and worst vacation, I ever had!!! the hardest part was removing all of the old material first.
Traditional boat builders used oakum which is still available in white and red. At one time it was made from horse hair and loosely spun with asphaltum as a binder. Some plumbing and marine suppliers still carry this. It is pressed into place with caulking and yarning irons that resemble large blunt masonry chisels. This pre-dated flexible caulking. In plumbing, it was used as a packing before lead was poured into a joint and packed tight. I began my trade learning this and I’m only 57 which tells how much technologies have changes in a very short time.
Thank you Arlos for adding that you are only 57! Me too. My grandmother once warned me “You are still young at 50, so don’t listen to any one give you any hogwash about it”! I really feel that is true. So, I can move forward in this adventure of fixing up a tiny cabin deep in the woods. I’ll look into both your great suggestions. They sound entirely feasible. My daughter has a little “change pot” that is filling up for the Tiny Tot stove. I am going to try and post a few progress reports once we can get back up in…may be close to the Fourth of July this year. Cheers! Susan
Very expensive is right–a few years ago we had a 2×2 inch square in a small museum exhibit that would have cost more than our budget could absorb if we’d had to replace it. I have trouble wrapping my mind around it as a cost-effective building solution. But if you wanted to build a ridiculously expensive ecoluxe house with lots of glass, you could do worse than sandwich a thin slice of aerogel between two sheets of glass. It would look beautiful as well as be very effective insulation, and probably would maintain insulative properties indefinitely, unlike vacuum-sealed double-paned glass.
I received a 1″ cube from a manufacture in Virginia that makes this from coal. If memory serves a cubic foot was about $2000. I had planned to use this as a base for building plates for capacidance de-ionization a big fancy word for using DC current to remove contaminants out of a fluid stream. It was a long way from using this as a medium for home insulation.
I’ve seen some aerogel up close..it is just as they say…solid smoke. I remember reading that it was used by NASA for collecting space dust…the collector was made from aerogel and the dust would impact and be “collected” by the solid structure of the gel….a bit like how Ballistic gel would catch a bullet but still let you see what the bullet looks like.
This stuff is pretty fragile, a quote here from wikpedia..
“Pressing softly on an aerogel typically does not leave a mark; pressing more firmly will leave a permanent depression. Pressing firmly enough will cause a catastrophic breakdown in the sparse structure, causing it to shatter like glass—a property known as friability.”
catastrophic breakdown, is not a condition I would like to see in a homes insulation, anyone who has spent any time on a construction site would agree…that having something this delicate around it not ideal.
Also from Wikpedia..This stuff would need to be treated to remove its hydrophilic qualities, one this you dont want is you insulation acting like a giant sponge and sucking up moisture.
“Aerogels by themselves are hydrophilic, but chemical treatment can make them hydrophobic. If they absorb moisture they usually suffer a structural change, such as contraction, and deteriorate, but degradation can be prevented by making them hydrophobic”
The Thermoblock product listed above seems to be targeted for isolation of the thermal bridging found between a stud and the interior sheathing…not used for general insulation in the wall cavities. Not sure if they plan to develop a product for that…it is indeed a great insulator…just get past its delicate nature, hydrophillic state, and cost and your there!
One very promising area would be to include it between panes of glass for supper insulated windows, here it would be protected but still perfom well.
here is a cool link about the research on making aerogel clearer.
http://www.aerogel.org/?p=997
Sounds like it wouldn’t be right for insulating my cabin-too much water exposure-we’re trying to figure out how to fill in the gaps between the vertical sheathing boards of native sugar pine. Log cabin chinking except up and downways. Anyone have good ideas?
How about aluminized mylar (space blanket material)? It’s thin, incredibly efficient, fairly cheap, and waterproof.
here is a product that might be worth a look
http://www.aerogel.com/products/pdf/Spaceloft_DS.pdf
Spaceloft made by aspen arogels looks good too. To bad it didn’t have pricing in the pdf. Aspen Aerogel insulation blankets could be just the thing to wrap a tiny home in.
It’s not a retail thing? You might not be able to get a small enough piece. so if you could get enough people together and split the cost would that work?
New European homes are so effcient, heat exchangers are used to keep the house comfortable and only a very small space heater makes up the difference.
What is now referred to as intrusion in US homes, used to be called fresh air. I think the big mistake is not allowing the house to breath making the interior air quality worse than outside in many cases.
My northern central coast CA home is only partially heated for two months of the year. Temperatures rarely go 15 degrees one way or the other.
Modern Aerogel insulation:
Costs the same as CI
Repels water
Not Toxic
Easily Recyclable
Full disclosure: I work at Thermablok and this is my area of expertise within the company.
Advantages:
CI requires rigid sheets that mimic wall facings, which they do very poorly. Thermablok is applied only to the frame faces. Thermablok Aerogel flexible composite uses up to 75% less material and allows direct mounting of the wall facing to the frame greatly increasing net strength. Aerogel insulation is a water repellant; lots of tech stuff but there exist several processes, one produces hydrophylic the others hydrophobic. We use the process that produces hydrophobic aerogel.
Green:
Thermablok Aerogel is made out of Silicon DiOxide, same as sand, abundant and Recyclable. Plenty of sand on planet Earth.
CI and SIP are primarily made from either polyisocyanurate, a thermosetting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosetting_polymer polymer essentially never recycled, or polystyrene, which contains up to .2% styrene monomer, a suspected carcinogen. No one is ever going to make me breath that stuff. Both are made from Oil and Gas and the styrene requires the manufacture and use of Benzene, a known carcinogen. Neither are biodegradable.
Polystyrene Cancer Risk
http://www.buildinggreen.com:80/auth/article.cfm/2005/1/1/Insulation-Thermal-Performance-is-Just-the-Beginning/?&printable=yes
Polyisocyanurate CI and SIP unlikely to be recycled
http://www.ecoact.org/Programs/Green_Building/green_Materials/sip.htm
Comparison of Eight Insulation Materials
http://greenhomeguide.com/know-how/article/buyers-guide-to-green-insulation
Cost: The installed cost is approximately the same as Continuous Insulation, “CI”, now mandated in several “zones” within the U.S. The end results are functionally identical as to the mitigation of thermal bridging. Total wall resistance to heat loss, thus reduction in heating costs year after year are on the order of 30 – 45%. As the long term savings are enormous, energy and cost, the material pays for itself in a hurry.
Contact:
Don Adrian
Acoustiblok
6900 Interbay Blvd
Tampa, Florida 33616
813-980-1400