the right stuff

The new cellulose gang finished, and the drywallers are hanging 'rock. It's dusty.


I love cellulose. Our installer, JW Geothermal, did a decent job, and used quality product. I say that there is a reasonable pallet of insulations that can do a good job, but none of them can come to the table of low embodied energy, breathability, and cost the way that chewed up recycled newspaper can. Add a bit of wheat starch and some misting water, and it's paper mache' fun.
We got carried away and did quite a bit of sound deadening in the interior walls and floor joists. The sound transmittance between rooms can be lessenned tremendously, and the time to do it seems like now.
The outside of the stud walls is covered with an unbroken layer of 1 1/2" polyisocyanurate rigid insulation, to break the thermal bridge created by the wall studs. This is covered by a house wrap and vertical strapping to create a rain screen and let the siding dry from both sides.

We call this our "matrix wall" because there are a variety of integrated systems and materials coalescing to do the thing an enclosure is supposed to do: keep out the elements, minimize the need for additional heating or cooling, allow a building to stand a very long time.