Bio based foam insulation

sydthebeat

EyeOnTheBall wrote: »

To Sinnerboy:
The old tale that's going around about spray foam 'rotting' attics comes from applicators in the UK who put on a closed cell insulation without allowing for breathability. That was just plain product ignorance and lack of adequate training.
It seems they didn't read the instructions on the barrel and ruined it......just like they did with their pints of Guinness!

eyeontheball

perhaps you can give us the breathability (Sd) figures of open-cell foam insulation, and the accrediated test methods they were derived from?

iamlegend2008

Hi

I had a salesman in or a spray foam company today and got what I thought was a reasonable quote for 6 inches of foam (filling inbetween rafters with open cell breathable foam).

The Uvalue of the foam would be 0.19 (so within regs) but I would add insulated slabs on the dormer ceiling.

The pros (actually cons) of using a bio foam have been documented in another thread so its caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) as to whether anyone uses it and Im currently discussing with by BER assessor.

One of the points raised was that the salesman maintains that the dormer roof could be made airtight using this method and there would be no need for a breathable airtight membrane (such a siga or intello) etc

The sofit vents are not covered themselves but the purloin is sealed at the wallplate level with foam.

The walls would be made airtight by means of a scratch coat.

Does anyone have any comments about using the foam as a means to achieve airtightness in the dormer ?

Thanks.

sydthebeat

do not use a product that does not have proper certification...

as far as i know, these open cell, soy based spray on foam do not have iab,bba or european norm certification yet... so dont use it.

sales persons will tell you exactly what you need to hear...
"this is a great product..."
"used in the US for over 40 years..."
"creates an air tight barrier..."

etc etc

NONE of these claims mean anything without proper proof.

PS, your ber assessor should be telling you that any product that doesnt have the necessary certification HAS TO BE IGNORED from the point of view of an energy assessment.... if he/she doesnt know this then id be worried.....

sinnerboy

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055316775&highlight=foam

muffler

I think we can merge this with the other thread.

rowan

Just spoke to someone at http://www.biobasedinsulation.ie and he said they're getting BER certification for the foam insulation product next week, but not IAB/BBA.

So is a BER cert as good as an IAB/BBA cert, i.e., would you guys trust it enough to begin using it?

sydthebeat

rowan wrote: »

Just spoke to someone at http://www.biobasedinsulation.ie and he said they're getting BER certification for the foam insulation product next week, but not IAB/BBA.

So is a BER cert as good as an IAB/BBA cert, i.e., would you guys trust it enough to begin using it?

There is no such thing as BER certification on a market product...

a BER certificate is a certificate that explains the energy rating of a building....

if thats what they actually said to you, id run a thousand miles in the opposite direction.... they are either trying to bluff you or they do not have an understanding of what they are talking about....

and anyway, this product has will achieve similar u values to using plain old fibreglass insulation.. .
without certification all that they claim to do can be taken with a grain of salt...

its interesting to note that in icynenes situation (they have a bba cert).. there is no reference to the increase achieved in air tightness by using this product..... which is part of the sales pitch...

sas

sydthebeat wrote: »

There is no such thing as BER certification on a market product...

a BER certificate is a certificate that explains the energy rating of a building....

I wonder if he meant BRE? They do issue certifications AFAIK.

Just a thought...

PirateShampoo

Icynene Foam insulation is full certified to use in Ireland

sinnerboy

sydthebeat wrote: »

its interesting to note that in icynenes situation (they have a bba cert).. there is no reference to the increase achieved in air tightness by using this product..... which is part of the sales pitch...

They sort of claim it at 4.3 here Syd

http://www.nsai.ie/modules/certificates/uploads/pdf/IAB090333.pdf

2 Comments

1. OSB used as speciied in Table 1 will act as a vapour barrier - in the wrong location - see attachment below
2. U value calc - BR 443 2006 convention for repeat thermal bridging is 15% not 9%

I note the product has an excellent μ value - 3.3 . That compares to fibreglass - μ value -1

.

sinnerboy

iamlegend2008 wrote: »

Hi

I had a salesman in or a spray foam company today and got what I thought was a reasonable quote for 6 inches of foam (filling inbetween rafters with open cell breathable foam).

The Uvalue of the foam would be 0.19 (so within regs) but I would add insulated slabs on the dormer ceiling.

The pros (actually cons) of using a bio foam have been documented in another thread so its caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) as to whether anyone uses it and Im currently discussing with by BER assessor.

One of the points raised was that the salesman maintains that the dormer roof could be made airtight using this method and there would be no need for a breathable airtight membrane (such a siga or intello) etc

The sofit vents are not covered themselves but the purloin is sealed at the wallplate level with foam.

The walls would be made airtight by means of a scratch coat.

Does anyone have any comments about using the foam as a means to achieve airtightness in the dormer ?

Thanks.

Don't usually like gravedigging - but in the light of the recent appearance of

http://www.nsai.ie/modules/certifica.../IAB090333.pdf

It is worth noting at

1. Table 1 that 6 inches of foam results in U Value of 0.28 - not 0.19
2. 4.2 that a vapour control layer is required .

sydthebeat

sinnerboy wrote: »

2. U value calc - BR 443 2006 convention for repeat thermal bridging is 15% not 9%

section 4.6.1 shows ceiling joists at 600 c/c can have repeat thermal bridging at a default fraction of 0.09.... (48/600 + 0.01)

however, in most cases of 400 c/c rafters / joists.. the fraction will be...

48/400 + 0.01 = 0.13....

so typically the IAB cert has given every variable factor in favour of the material looking to be certified.....

lots of persons considering this material do not realise that it simply gives teh same u value as fibreglass....

in order to achieve a 0.16 ceiling u value youre looking at needing close to 300mm..... this is easy to achieve with 'rolled out' insulation... but to achieve it with spray foam you need to build a 300 deep structure.....

to achieve 0.2 on a sloping ceiling youre talking about using close to 220mm......

every single person who has come to me over the last 2 years about this product has been told incorrect facts from the sales reps..... each of these persons has decided not to use it when these lies were exposed.... "shooting yourself in the foot" comes to mind....

ardara1

Interesting article

On Icynene
Icynene has arrived in the UK. What is it and why should it raise you from your slumber? It’s a spray-in foam insulation system, hailing from Canada and its makers claim you can get PassivHaus style performance from it without having to build walls and roofs which are 500mm thick. In fact, it gets used in the high Artic where the temperature falls to minus 60°C at only 90mm thickness.

I interviewed Jeff Hood, one of Icynene’s owners and the man responsible for bringing the product into Europe. Since the company’s formation in 1986 in Toronto, it’s achieved spectacular growth in North America and now accounts for around 5% of installations in US new housing. It works equally well in hot climates as in cold. Unlike the more common polyurethane foams, Icynene is blown with water: this was originally done to avoid formaldehyde off gassing but they have stuck with it to produce a unique sponge-like product that remains flexible. This flexibility is one of the keys to its success because it produces a truly airtight barrier and one that will stay airtight indefinitely. Hood tells me that this factor alone makes Icynene much more effective than almost any other insulation system. “We don’t believe boards are really effective because the caulking around them is never going to be done perfectly and in any event it will crack over time.”

So far all well and good. However, Icynene faces one or two problems before it can become widely adopted in Europe. “Europe is U value obsessed,” says Hood. “We believe we can get excellent performance from this product at fairly minimal thicknesses and that, whilst we could apply it at 300mm depth, there is no point because the performance improvement is absolutely minimal. Why waste footprint needlessly?”

Europe however is still feeling the effects of a nasty little tiff with the multifoil industry which, in truth, is still not satisfactorily resolved. The multifoil manufacturers make very similar claims and thus far have not been able to establish them via traditional testing methods. Icynene is a very different product to multifoil but the claims made by Hood and his colleagues have many similarities. Thus far Icynene has won BBA approval for use in walls and roofs, but only as a substitute (in performance terms) with glass fibre and/or polystyrene, which makes it rather poorer than the polyurethane family. But Hood’s contention is that it’s actually much better than all the other available mainstream insulation products and to prove it he has hired the building scientists at Napier University in Edinburgh to run some tests on Icynene in their laboratory in Glenrothes, a facility I visited last year with the UK Timber Frame Association. Results should be available soon. If they confirm Hood’s contentions, it could re-ignite the debate over the effectiveness of the established testing method, the guarded hotbox test.

Many people will think that we’ve been here before. The multifoil debate raged for many years and it was all based around the validity or otherwise of the guarded hot box as being the best (or only) method for measuring the effectiveness of insulation materials. The difference this time is that, in Icynene, we have a manufacturer who can quite happily supply insulation at any thickness. As Hood explained to me: “We can spray at whatever thickness the client wants, we just don’t want to waste their money, or use more material or footprint than is necessary. We think that’s green. And we think the move in Europe towards PassivHaus-style massive insulation is a costly mistake.” With Icynene installed in over 200,000 buildings including several LEED platinum standards, it could be that our future insulation standards could once again be up for debate.

sydthebeat

can anyone point to independent analysis that shows

1. air tightness result before installation
2. air tightness result after installation....??

I agree that were are u value obsessed, but i dont believe that we should row back on current u value standards... i think we need to bring the other building physic issues such as thermal bridging, hygroscopicy, breathability etc to the fore so we can properly determine what a 'sustainable' house is...

if we only focused on u value we'd all live in caravans.....

ardara1

sydthebeat wrote: »

can anyone point to independent analysis that shows

1. air tightness result before installation
2. air tightness result after installation....??

I agree that were are u value obsessed, but i dont believe that we should row back on current u value standards... i think we need to bring the other building physic issues such as thermal bridging, hygroscopicy, breathability etc to the fore so we can properly determine what a 'sustainable' house is...

if we only focused on u value we'd all live in caravans.....

HI Syd -

I don't think the 'air tightness' of the material is a factor at all. We know where air leakage in a house comes from - services and junctions. The Acceditted/Accedptable details show us how to seal these.

And your right about measurment standards- they're there and thats what we should stick to (See my separate post o multifoils)

Foil manufacturers pushed for 'new' was to measure their performance - UK Gov't has dug their heels in and told them to play on the pitch where the game was being played.

sinnerboy

Great posts A1 - ( not for the 1st time ) . Thanks

chingching

Hi,Im building a timber frame dormer house(2800sqft) and im planning on putting a HRV system in and im looking for advice on the best ways to make the house air tight..Spray Foam maybe v fiber glass insulation?
Thanks.

gman2k

chingching wrote: »

Hi,Im building a timber frame dormer house(2800sqft) and im planning on putting a HRV system in and im looking for advice on the best ways to make the house air tight..Spray Foam maybe v fiber glass insulation?
Thanks.

Well glass fibre insulation will not do anything for air tightness.
Bio based spray foam insulation for domestic is imo only worth doing if you are building a timber frame. And at that, the biobased spray foam on it's own won't give you full airtightness - you still need to go around and caulk joints of studs, rails to floor etc. Also, window and door opes need special treatments with airtight tapes.

chingching

Thanks gman..:)

riccol1966

I'm no expert, but I know one thing - fibreglass/mineral wool/variants are all poor substitutes in any open vented attic. When wind moves across these products, their insulation properties reduce vastly. Wind goes through them and removes the trapped air and then replaces it with cold air.

I'm fed up with being told to "just put another layer of fibreglass at right angles to your existing fibreglass and you've got your u-value and have avoided thermal bridging" Yeah, right. And no proper tests of these products are done with wind movement which replicates the true conditions of any non-habited attic space. I'd love to see those calculations guys..

This is where foam insulation (with a nod to cellulose) comes in, open cell will close off x inches, so the actual u-value of those x inches will be close to the manufactures stated values, as regardless of conditions the insulation will perform the same. I'm not saying this will get you a lower U-value than fibre/mineral wool per inch of insulation, but at least it will be a consistent u-value regardless of outside conditions.

Fingallion

I know it is an old thread but I think it is funny to hear people suggest that the US might have milder climatic conditions than Ireland. I have returned after living 14 years in the Northeast and the Midwest (chicago) and i can tell you that there is no weather in ireland that is not experienced in these areas. Driving rain, damp, freezing beyond any comprehension in ireland. heavy snow, ice rain (does not occur in Ireland), real storms, not the easy stuff here. Artic in winter, tropical in summer to be honest.

Anyway, we had a brick house in Chicago and had all the fiberglass insulation removed and replaced where possible by closed cell foam about 100mm thick. The improvement was palpable. The place was tight as a drum and basically weatherproof. I imagine that any standards there are eventually adopted here in ireland. House building here is pretty primitive historically. Insulation has been used commonplace in the US since the turn of the 20th century.

sydthebeat

Fingallion wrote: »

I know it is an old thread but I think it is funny to hear people suggest that the US might have milder climatic conditions than Ireland. I have returned after living 14 years in the Northeast and the Midwest (chicago) and i can tell you that there is no weather in ireland that is not experienced in these areas. Driving rain, damp, freezing beyond any comprehension in ireland. heavy snow, ice rain (does not occur in Ireland), real storms, not the easy stuff here. Artic in winter, tropical in summer to be honest.

Anyway, we had a brick house in Chicago and had all the fiberglass insulation removed and replaced where possible by closed cell foam about 100mm thick. The improvement was palpable. The place was tight as a drum and basically weatherproof. I imagine that any standards there are eventually adopted here in ireland. House building here is pretty primitive historically. Insulation has been used commonplace in the US since the turn of the 20th century.

whos suggesting ireland has a 'milder' climate???

ireland actually has less temperature fluctuations than the us...

but our climate is noticeably more humid....

Fingallion

The relative humidity in Ireland ranges from 73 to 83% in dublin. In Chicago it ranges from 78% to 86%(Seattle, Savannah, New orleans, etc would be way worse). Some places like the Seattle are earily similar to Ireland and much damper. I just think it is worth considering a product that has been embraced in the US for decades. I know you have not quite suggested climate being 'milder' in the US but you have suggested that humidity is lower .... and therefore not comparable.... not true. Anyway, i am being a little pedantic probably. I am looking at insulating a very cold damp house in North County Dublin and I am very tempted to go the spray foam route as I had great success in my old house in Chicago. I wonder about standards and certifications in Ireland and their actual impact on my life, I find it hard to believe that money and politics and lobbys are not involved somehow. I feel that the building construction has been of low standard here in general vs most 1st world countries in anycase so I am willing to utilise accepted practices from other countries.

gman2k

Fingallion wrote: »

I wonder about standards and certifications in Ireland and their actual impact on my life, I find it hard to believe that money and politics and lobbys are not involved somehow. I feel that the building construction has been of low standard here in general vs most 1st world countries in anycase so I am willing to utilise accepted practices from other countries.

Bio-based spray insulation is now certified in Ireland by the BRE.

'BioBased 501s Spray Foam Insulation has been awarded independent Certification - Number 151/09 by the BRE (Building Research Establishment). The certificate provides is an independent third party confirmation that the characteristics of BioBased Insulation and its method of application comply with all the key requirements of Irish, UK and European current building regulations.'

sydthebeat

Chicago has a cold and dry climate with large seasonal fluctuations in temperature and humidity
Dublin is mostly cool with moderate humidity levels and moderate fluctuations in temperature and humidity.

It doesnt deal with my main concerns about this product. I consider it a very good product, but like all 'new' products i will question its claims until they are proven by certification.

It is now apparent that spray foam insulation has roughly the same themal conductivity as fibreglass / rockwool. A large claim by producers of this product is that it improves the air infiltration factor of some builds. Thats fine, they can claim what they want, but until independent accredited study is carried out to prove these claims than all they are is sales speak.
I do not buy the "have been used in the US for decades" argument as sufficient to accept these products open armed into irish construction systems. The fact alone that some installers are selling this to clients as an alternative method to fill cavity walls is proof alone that there are unscrupulous persons in the market.

Fingallion wrote: »

The relative humidity in Ireland ranges from 73 to 83% in dublin. In Chicago it ranges from 78% to 86%(Seattle, Savannah, New orleans, etc would be way worse). Some places like the Seattle are earily similar to Ireland and much damper. I just think it is worth considering a product that has been embraced in the US for decades. I know you have not quite suggested climate being 'milder' in the US but you have suggested that humidity is lower .... and therefore not comparable.... not true. Anyway, i am being a little pedantic probably. I am looking at insulating a very cold damp house in North County Dublin and I am very tempted to go the spray foam route as I had great success in my old house in Chicago. I wonder about standards and certifications in Ireland and their actual impact on my life, I find it hard to believe that money and politics and lobbys are not involved somehow. I feel that the building construction has been of low standard here in general vs most 1st world countries in anycase so I am willing to utilise accepted practices from other countries.

gman2k

sydthebeat wrote: »

It doesnt deal with my main concerns about this product. I consider it a very good product, but like all 'new' products i will question its claims until they are proven by certification.

Certification

Is this certification good enough?

ardara1

gman2k wrote: »

Certification

Is this certification good enough?

I see it satisfies Building Regulations Ireland Part L 1997 - up-to-date then!

RKQ

sydthebeat wrote: »

I consider it a very good product, but like all 'new' products i will question its claims until they are proven by certification.

A large claim by producers of this product is that it improves the air infiltration factor of some builds. Thats fine, they can claim what they want, but until independent accredited study is carried out to prove these claims than all they are is sales speak.

I do not buy the "have been used in the US for decades" argument as sufficient to accept these products open armed into irish construction systems.

I'd have to agree Syd.... Very well said.
Certification by Agg Board is expensive for the manufacturer but it is an independent test that the consumer can rely on.

Its not a perfect system but it does work. We haven't had a major structural / material failure in this country. (Unlike Canada, USA and Austrailia - faulty material / method cost millions to rectify.)

gman2k

RKQ wrote: »

...Certification by Agg Board is expensive for the manufacturer but it is an independent test that the consumer can rely on.

So........ this product has BRE certification - for use in this country! And the consumer can rely on it!

RKQ

gman2k wrote: »

So........ this product has BRE certification - for use in this country! And the consumer can rely on it!

That depends.....
I didn't mention BRE, as my post was about foreign methods of construction and Irish Aggregate Board Certification.

The BRE is one of many European Certification Boards. (personally I think highly of it and agree it is similar to our own Certification Board.)

I do not think that BRE certify products for use in Ireland! Why would they?:D