Green Building Insulation: Liquid House Wrap and Blown In Cellulose
Exhaustive green building insulation is critical for energy efficiency. That’s why we’ve dedicated three blog posts to insulation in our LEED Platinum home headquarters! You’ve already seen how we insulated the concrete slab foundation and used locally sourced structural insulated panels. Today, we’re revealing two new layers of green building insulation.
Exterior Liquid House Wrap
Most residential construction uses overlapping sheets of plastic house wrap. The sheeting suffers from gaps and tears and requires hardware in your exterior walls. To seamlessly protect our green building insulation, we used a liquid house wrap made of rubber. This material is effectively painted on. Because of rubber’s self-sealing properties, our liquid house wrap won’t tear and is more waterproof and airtight than conventional house wrap. In fact, this green building is so airtight that it became Missouri’s first Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) certified building.
Here’s a photo of the liquid house wrap application—expect questions from your neighbors about the color!
Here’s how the liquid house wrap looked after application:
Blown In Cellulose Insulation
A building’s ceiling is often one of its largest thermal bridges, or areas where heat loss occurs. To maximize energy efficiency, Peckham Architecture doubles the recommended ceiling insulation. After we insulated our concrete slab, erected SIPs and applied the house wrap, we insulated the ceiling of our green building. The 18-inch ceiling cavity contains blown in cellulose, a recycled paper product treated with borax to protect from infestations.
Learn more in Episode 5 of our Green Building Series:
Ready to begin your own deep green building or renovation? A 1-hour consultation with Peckham Architecture includes project meeting notes, cost estimate and fee proposal for $250.
Contact us today to see what’s possible: 573.777.4444
NEXT: Energy saving advantages of ductless heating and cooling
MORE: Watch our full-length green building documentary
Deep Green: Peckham Architecture’s Green Building Documentary