Insulation

One of the key features of the building is it's exterior wall framing and super-insulation.

Using an exterior double wall, the design provides a complete perimeter thermal brake by leaving an air gap between the interior and exterior studs. This air gap will later be filled with insulation.

 If you pay close attention to this picture, you will see that there are two sets of studs, headers and runners! It might seem like overkill but the whole idea is to have an air-tight super insulated building envelope.

Can you imagine walls full of newspaper? For this project we are using  blown in wet cellulose insulation. It's made of recycled newspaper! How cool is that? Basically paper pulp! This makes blown in wet cellulose insulation a wonderful Green product.

The cellulose is blown in wet in the cavities of the walls under pressure to make the product stick to the walls and fill in the studs of the frame. When the insulation dries it stays in place and is very dense. Blown in wet cellulose insulation is up to 25% more dense than fiberglass insulation. It also fills in voids that fiberglass is not very good at doing such as around light switches and corners. It also contrubues to keeping the wall air-tight.  This saves energy on heating and cooling over the typical fiberglass insulation. 

This image shows how the air space between the exterior sheathing of the wall and the space between the two studs, is filled with high density wet cellulose.

Once the first layer of wet insulation is installed and is dry, a mesh is placed on the wall and a second layer of hard pack loose celluluse fills in the remainding wall cavity.

There is also little to no waste. Whatever falls on the floor, the installer can place back into the blower!!!

With this wall assembly, the building will be able to achieve an R-value of 49 on its exterior walls! The super-insulated windows combined with  the doors and roof insulation will keep the interior nicely insulated and with low energy usage for cooling and heating. The USGBC has anticipated that the project will obtain 19 points on its energy consuption credit. That is simply awesome!