I was reading the post on philosiphies of timber framing and the topic of insulating tf's came up. My question is whats best? I havn,t used sips , but aren't they made with policyinurate a phormaldahyde thing? I don't care much for fiberglass either but it works. Any one used steel wool insulation and whats it like? I've often thought the british tudor house with there masonary infill was a good idea. I realize motar doesn't have a good r value. What if foam or vermiculite was added and maybe a foil/foam thermal break in the center? Any thoughts?

I don't have much info on sips, other than they are popular. A friend of mine has been using a cotton product made from recycled blue jeans. I am very worried about out-gassing from modern materials. Apparently formaldihyde is in a lot of products, especially carpeting. This may be a wild idea, but, I think a lot of allergies and respiratory problems come from living around these materials.

Dave

here is a source for wool insulation:
http://www.goodshepherdwool.com/

Ahh! Alberta the land of the golden fleece. :rolleyes:

I don't know how large a house you are building but you might look into importing a full cargo container of Thermafleece or Isonat from England instead and selling what you don't need dockside.

I don't have any practical knowledge, but here's what I'd like to do for walls and plan to do in a few years: wood chip light clay walls. It's been done in Europe for hundreds of years.

The concept is straight forward. You have a perimeter foundation around the outside of your frame and then use one of a few methods to form 12"+ walls made of wood chips and clay.

The materials are cheap to free and most often available very close by. Perhaps you encounter clay from excavating your foundation, or have a dump truck bring it to your site as overburden. The wood chips come from one of those tow-behind chippers arborists use to hack up brances and small trees.

You mix the two materials in an ordinary concrete/mortar mixer to form a slurry of sorts. Very light framing or forms hold the mixture until it dries sufficiently to support itself.

The walls breath naturally, have a great R value, and are attractive when plastered over.

Steve Chappelle of Fox Maple in Maine has commercially built walls he says are of equal cost (labor is the main expense) to SIPs.
Here's the first link I found on a search engine:

http://www.foxmaple.com/proclay.html

From my understanding, wood chip light clay meets most codes, but it is subject to the local building inspector's judgment.

Have fun.

Zach

Do the wood chips need to be dried? Won't high moisture cause molds which can be just as dangerous ? I believe we can come up with something cheaper, safer , and better. Industries that sell insulation probably aggressively campain to suppress these ideas. I recently heard of adding water to blown in cellulose insul. and it stuck like paper machete. What if rag wool was formulated with a waterbase glue and sprayed on wattle and daub framework and plastered over to seal. I also believe out-gasing is responsible for many respitory and other health problems. Much of todays line of thinking seems geared toward making the insut. materials un-palatable to orginisms harmfull to us but they are usually also very toxic to us. Maybe materials should incorperate materials that work against the growth of harmfull pathogens , such as garlic or marigold. It would ward of werewolfs too , ha ha.

Hemp is a great substitute for the wood in chip/clay walls, once it's rhetted (decordicated) it's naturally mildew resistant. It's available from Canada at fairly reasonable prices in a short fiber (chip) form.

If I had the time and money that's more or less the direction I would have gone, I'd also include a slow perc radiant barriers. Bank financing can be a problem when using an innovative approach.

I'm still looking the financial miracle that will allow me to use wool or a combination of wool and hemp batts in the attic... The recycled blue jean (cotton batts) is the best domestic product I've come across for this purpose and at 3x the cost of fiberglass it's still within our budget.

Hemp would make a great binder also in a conglomerant type infill. Another product that occured to me is using solid wood as in fill. The log cabin industry for years has been claiming (and proving) wood is a good insulator and provides thermal mass (stores heat). How about block wood laid in using hemp or wool as chinking layered between coarses. Low grade and cull wood could be used , soft pourous spec. would probably provide the best r values.

Hmm, that goodshepherdswool looks nice but expensive. Here in rural France, we're ready to trial cheaper solutions, voici:



Thats a window into our sheepswool filled walls. Raw sheepswool priced at 35Euros for 110kg! We sorted out the biggest dags, but made no attempt to clean really; NO odour, even in summer heat. The other common problem cited is mites. Its two years now with no problem evident.

A hard squint might spot a gap at the top of the box; yes, we have a problem to solve with packing method and density. Thats a good reason to have the observation window. The trial gives to optimism for use in our timber-frame to be soon.

Lee

At a pioneer museum in Ohio, next to Lehman's Hardware, I saw a settlement house that had between closely spaced posts with slots centered on the side faces with riven cordwood set into the slots and earthen infill. It looked effective.