What could these two things possibly have in common? Insulation! In this post, I’m talking about interior insulation. I’ll tell you about what we did for the roof insulation in another post.
We evaluated all the reasonable options. We looked at spray foam, but we were concerned about the toxicity during install and over the lifetime of the wall. I had read about wool and recycled denim and even sent away for Thermacork samples. I wanted to do wool so bad. It’s such a virtuous resource with so many applications, yet farmers often burn their fleeces because of decreased global demand. Tragic. I actually wrote letters to my neighbors in whose yard I spied a flock; I petitioned for their sheered raw wool that I read I could convert into my own wool batts. But alas, they never responded, and after further research, I learned that they were likely “hair-sheep” bred to withstand our climate and would never produce the wool fleece I sought. Sigh. I would’ve loved to install wool throughout the interior walls, but the shipping costs, even from Oregon or Colorado, seemed prohibitive at the time. But, it turned out that my friend who had simultaneously fell in love with wool and procured some to use in her Dallas renovation, had some overstock that she generously sold to me. So, we were able to incorporate sheep’s wool insulation into the house after all! The wool was very easy for us to cut and install.
The other great product option was sourced locally by a female-owned, Austin-based company called Payless Insulation. The blow in cellulose insulation into a proprietary thin ‘web’ material that is stapled into place. The sound absorption ratings are super high and the thicker your walls, the higher the R-value. Celbar loose fill provides R-3.6 value per inch. So, in our 2×4 walls, we get R13, and in the 2×6 walls, we achieve R20. The wool is about the same, but you can wrap it around your head 🙂 The recycled cotton is also the same. I wore a mask just to protect from tiny particles when I was handling the cotton batts. I was able to fit the leftover pieces into other interior walls that we had to cut from our original budget. I did notice there were some weird sizing issues with the pieces, as echoed by this gentleman. In retrospect, the cost of wool it might have been more cost-effective than we originally estimated given the relatively higher cost of labor to install the Celweb and spray the Celbar loose fill.
So, our interior walls have either Celbar loose fill, Ultratouch recycled cotton or wool. All our exterior walls above nine feet (the gabled ends) also have Celbar or Ultratouch. The exterior Blox walls are solid, so they don’t require insulation. We used Celbar loose fill insulation above the ceiling in the Casita, which means that the attic space above it is actually not insulated. However, we laid a radiant barrier on top of the roof decking to reflect heat, so we’ll test its efficacy in the summer. The roof line in the studio and M House utilized a different system, which I’ve described in another post.
considerafield 
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