Superinsulation For the Masses

(Page 5 of 5)

September/October 1986
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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Aside from the fact that panelized houses can be put up very quickly, the quality control possible when walls are assembled inside a factory make it easy to build a very well-sealed house. In the future, you're likely to see panelization used widely both to build energy-efficient mass-produced housing and to blanket post-and-beam dwellings.

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Roofs: Trussed roofs with attics are generally used in superinsulated construction, because the deep webs make the installation of 15 or more inches of loose insulation simple. There have been reports, however, of ceilings pulling away from interior partitions in some trussed systems; this may happen when only one of the three cords of the truss is buried in insulation and kept warmer than the others. An alternate approach is to use thick layers of rigid foam insulation for roof construction. This allows an air space to be left next to a sheet with foil facing to form a radiant energy barrier.

There are, of course, numerous other perfectly good approaches to increasing the energy-efficiency of your home. We've discussed only a few of the more common ones here, in the hope that the concepts will inspire you. Energy-efficient construction is as much a state of mind as it is a careful application of the right materials.

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