The Green Journey Starts at Home ™

Embodied energy is the amount of energy that goes into the manufacture and shipping of various building materials.  Cellulose insulation is amazing in that it has the lowest embodied energy of all other major insulation and building materials.  Cellulose has only 3002 BTU’s / cubic foot, whereas fiberglass consumes 9 times the energy to make (26996 BTU’s/cubic foot).

Synthetic carpeting….holy cow!  It takes 2.3 million BTU’s/cubic foot.  Aluminum is 13 million BTU’s /cubic foot.   It is no wonder why aluminum smelters are located where electrical energy is cheaper, like Columbia River or Iceland.

Reading about embodied energy in cellulose makes me pleased that this is what we have been recommending to most of our clients.  Not only is cellulose great for sealing air leaks, its healthier than other insulation and the lower energy required to make it lowers our carbon footprint.

We are seeing some very impressive results by dense packing cellulose into the cavity of walls and ceilings.  Often the situation is where two units share a common wall, like in a town home or in a condo where they share a ceiling/floor.

We have a client who after years of active duty in Vietnam, suffered from post traumatic stress disorder.  His next door neighbor at the town home would often play war games on his computer late into the evening….loud.  After years of patience and suffering, our client decided that enough was enough and that he wanted to fix the noise problem.  We dense packed the space between both units with over 1500 lbs of cellulose.  We are very pleased (as is our client) that the noise problem has gone away.

Noise can still transmit though wood and so if there is a lot of framing structure between two units there is bound to be some continued noise transfer.  However, the intensity will be greatly diminished.  The higher frequency sounds and conversations, will usually be diminished where as deeper bass sound will still propagate by some degree through the wood (why instruments and speaker use wood).  There are ways to further mitigate the sound transfer using additional barrier materials, that break the wood bridging between the units.

Cellulose has a distinct advantage over other insulation types.  Please see this controlled experiment that compares the advantages of cellulose in a fire.