Reflective Insulations

I have recieved a few e-mails about our use of relective insulations, and chose to address them here in writing and in pictures.

We are using three types of reflective pruducts, each having the same 97% reflectivity.





R/B/B/R = Reflective/Bubble/Bubble/Reflective -



This is used in the attic space. Along the underside of the top truss, leaving a 4" to 5" air channel right below the roof sheathing. This channel runs from the eaves to the peak in an unbroken run. The reflective foil will work in several ways.

R/B/B/W = Reflective/Bubble/Bubble/White Poly -



This product is for use below a concrete slab floor. The manufacturer recommends using the material white poly side up so the concrete touches the white poly material instead of the concretes acidic qualities eating into the reflective surface, which would put the reflective surface at this point facing down.***

*** Here I find a problem, and here is where I walk a different path. I placed the reflective side up, why? Because HEAT is RADIATIVE, the reflective surface reflects 97% of radiated heat, since our slab will be using radiant heat, the slab will be hot, and the heat that radiates down from within this heated concrete will if it hits a highly reflective surface be reflected back up into the living spaces. COLD DOES NOT RADIATE. Why are they facing the reflective qualities of the material towards a source of energy that does not radiate, its not as if the cold will be bounced back into the earth. So I have turned the product upside-down, and put a sheet of 6mil clear plastic, taped at the seams, ontop of the reflective surface to keep the concretes acidic nature at bay. End of rant. For now.

R/K = Reflective/Kraft Paper -



This product has the same reflective qualities as the above products, it is just stuck to a sheet of kraft paper. This we used below the tar paper and shingles, and on the west wall behind the tyvek, to help radiate the setting sun's heat gathered in our west wall stucco.


Now that you know where I am coming from, here is where I am using the stuff and why.

R/B/B/R = Reflective/Bubble/Bubble/Reflective
Lets re-establish here the where and the why, this is used in the attic space. Along the underside of the top truss, leaving a 4" to 5" air channel right below the roof sheathing.



This channel runs from the eaves to the peak in an unbroken run. The reflective foil will work in several ways.

1. As a reflective membrane. As heat radiates through the roof sheathing it is bounced 97% back upwards. This reheats the sheathing and radiates back outside. It also heats the air within the 4" - 5" air channel.

2. As a wall for the air channel. As this heated air rises, as hot air does, it pulls cooler air in at the eaves. This funnels the heated air within the channel upwards to the peak where it vents outside. This keeps a cooler temperature in the air channel; in turn keeping the bubbles from gaining so much more heat.

3. As insulation. The bubble/bubble aspect of the material is individual packets of air bubbles, the same kind of bubble-wrap that no one can resist popping when it is used in shipping boxes. These air bubbles do not allow air movement through the material they only allow the heat within them to radiate through. And this radiating heat is already dimminished by the reflective membrane above it.

4. As reflective of internal heat during the winter months.






Now to explain things further:

This method of channeling the heat out from between the trusses isn't intended to entirely keep the attic from getting hot, it is intended to keep the attic from getting blisteringly hot. The attic will get warm, possibly even hot, but no hotter than the ambient air temp out side, and probably as seen so far, much, cooler though not so cool as to condence water. We will also need to keep the air mass in the attic dry, because moisture transports heat. A dry 75 is so much "cooler" than a humid 75.

The use of reflective membranes is for heat only, no matter how little heat we are talking about. It does not work reflecting cold, just lesser amounts heat. So during winter as the sun warms the roof, it will also heat the air in the channel same as during the summer, only less so. Here is where I am planning a new approach and walking a different path yet again. We are going to close the eave vents and thus trap the air in the channel, this will keep a heated mass of air in place, thus warming the bubbles and the air in the attic. When I say Heat, we are only talking a few tens of degrees in the air channel, less so in the attic space, but here is where #4 from above comes into play, by reflecting back into the attic environment any radiant heat making it through the airchannel, or radiating up from the living space below keeping the attic mild during the harshest of winter cold. At night the heat will replace with cold in the air channel, but the heat in the attic space will be bounced around within the attic at the same 97%, loosing 3% to the cold air channel. All this is to allow our heat system to run more efficiently by not loosing heat to a deeply cold environment in the attic. Heat flows towards cold. So if the attic isn't "cold" then the heat in the house wont migrate towards it. If all this is confusing, welcome to thermodynamics.





We may also need to go into how the heat system works in order to fully see how a house is functioning, and breathing.

1. In a conventional house, with 8 foot ceilings, and forced air heat.




There is a plume of heated air coming from the air ducts straight to the ceiling, where it heats the air up there; on the ceiling. The warm air fills the void of space along the ceiling and as it falls because its cooling, it comes into your living environment, (the chair, couch, dinning table, the bed) and continues falling to the floor colder and colder and returns to the duct system to start all over again. The ceilings are warmer than the living environment, and even cooler at the floor.

2. In a conventional house, with 8 foot ceilings, and radiant heat system.



The heat is pumped through the floor heating up whatever mass is there, whether that mass is a wood floor or a slab of concrete. This heat then radiates from the floor upwards throught the living environment first your feet are warmed then the chair, couch, dining table and bed, then on upwards to the ceiling, as it is a radiant heat objects warm up as well, so will the ceiling, the whole environment is evenly warm.

3. In a house with tall ceilings, ours at 12', and a radiant heat system.

Things change yet again, the environment up to about 8 feet, is warmed by the radiant heat just as in a conventional 8' ceiling home. But the environment above the 8 foot mark begins to layer itself, a mildly warm area, and a cooler area and then there is the ceiling, the coolest part of the room, this is what I have heard called "layering of the thermal zones." Kind of like a lazagna, the hottest part is at the bottom. There is so much more to write, but I am out of time for now. Be back soon.




I think that is a good start, Lets rest here until I have time to write more.

Re-Mesh

Re-Mesh




Here we are getting the grid of #10 re-mesh put down, the white of the floor is actually the reflective silver side of a product called R/B/B/W TekFoil, which stands for Reflective/Bubble/Bubble/White-Poly. On top of that is a layer of 6mil plastic taped at the seams, and then the welded-wire grid.


Now the sellers of the R/B/B/W says to put the White side up (corrosive preventor), and the Reflective side down, this runs with the thought that the cold in the ground would be reflected down, therefore keeping the heat in the concrete slab from being chilled from below allowing you to save energy by not loosing as much heat downwards. The White-Poly side keeps the product from being destroyed by the acidic concrete. And the Bubble/Bubble act as insulating barriers to the two sides.


Sadly this makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever to me, so I am once again doing things my way rather than the way I am "told" via the "instructions" and so I have placed the product Up-Side-Down... With the White side down and Reflective side up.


Here is why: We are heating the house with radiant pipes running through the slab of concrete.


1. Heat is Radiative, therefore the Reflective side will reflect the radiated heat back up into the slab, and then beyond up into the living environment. The Reflective side is 97% reflective of radiant energy, heat radiates, cold does not.


2. Cold is Not Radiative, it will not be "reflected back downwards by faceing the reflective surface towards the source of cold" i.e. the ground. Hence; in my book; it receives the white poly, which is just a vapor/sand/radon barrier at this point.


3. There are two layers of Bubble between the White-Poly side and the Reflective side to better insulate the heat from the cold. 3% of the heat from the slab which moved past the reflective surface, will move through the materials, heating the air in the bubbles, and diminishing the effects of the cold earth.


4. We also have a layer of 6mil clear plastic to handle the job of corrosive preventor from the etching and destructive powers of the acidic concrete protecting the highly reflective surface.





You can barely see our curious dog Riley, standing in the far doorway, she is a pretty good dog and stays outside most all the time now, we are trying not to let her nails pop all the bubbles. D'Artagnon is cooling off for abit playing with some cars on the floor.


The grids are rather flat, they don't look it because of the plastic sheets tugged this way and that. We have secured them altogether with zip-ties. We will attatch the radiant pipes to these grids pretty soon.


You can also see the sub-grade pipe (middle/top) that sits above the sand floor, it will still be 2" below the finish surface of the concrete, we still need to reinforce this area with sticks of heavy rebar so we dont get any cracks in the finished floor. (thanks Mr Joiner)

More to come soon.

!!! MOVING FORWARD !!!

June 22

A- We finally get the OK to bury the plumbing inside the house. We had a few minor fixes to the plumbing to bring it into code, add a 4" vent pipe here, drop to 2" pipe here, add a long-sweep wye for the washing machine, change a tiolet pipe to a longsweep, and thats that.

B- Now we can move forward. We were doing small jobs like some landscaping, we built two raised flower beds/vegetable garden, and a much larger though not as impressive garden elsewhere. We also threw in there a vacation of sorts to Washington DC, New York and an amusement park in Pennsylvania. All this while we waited for the OK.

June 28

A- !!! ELECTRICITY !!! We finally got our main power, 400Amps, hooked up to the house, we have two 200Amp Load Centers (Fuse Panels) to handle the load. One of our load centers is specificaly designed for use with a generator. When the power goes off we switch OFF the Main on the load center which then allows us to switch ON our Generator without any electricity running back up the line potentially injuring an electrical worker. Once we switch off all the fuses we wont need we can start the generator, and leave on whichever appliances (frige, freezer, radient heat system, ect.) we do need by turning on or off the fuse switches; so as not to overload the generator.

The green line is the buried cold water line to the secondary bathroom.

B- Everything not essential to the next step in the process has been removed from the house, some went to the greenhouse, which has plenty of space available, yet gets well over 120 degrees during the day, the rest went up to the shed which is nearly bursting at the seems.

C- Leveled the dirt floor so to have a 4 inch thick slab. used the laser level, shovels and the tractor to get the job done. Some of the in-floor plumbing is still visible above the dirt floor, it will be encased in the concrete though.

June 29

A- We are laying the reflective foil on the floor. This is a highly reflective material on one side, it replaces up to 2 inches of styrofoam, by reflecting the heat from the radient system in the concrete slab back up into the house, and blocking the cold from entering the slab. It is also a radon barrier.

B- We will be placing a layer of 6 mil plastic ontop of the reflective foil inorder to prevent the acids in the concrete from damaging the reflective surface, then ontop of the plastic will go the welded wire remesh, to help bond the concrete, and to zip tie the radiant pipes to it.

As of St Patrics Day ...

An up date on the roof seems to be in order, the shingles are done, the house looks great, Dave Steffen of DDS Construction did a marvelous job. I don't know where the photos of the finished product are, I'll post them as soon as I find them.

What we still need to do to the roof is put up the soffits and fascia.

Now that the weather has warmed above freezing, the ground inside the house is thawing, and is a wet sandy mess, its like walking into a freezer in the morning, and there is truely a dissernable fog in the house, which clears out once we open the windows, the outside temp is warm comparetively.

Outside the ground has thawed, and is a heavenly mess; if observing D is any indication. My son loves all the mud, this is the reason we wash his cloths separately from the rest of the laundry.

Onto the photos I do have...


Entering the door to the kitchen, these are the wires to several (six I believe), light configurations. Note that these pictures are only of the wiring for the lights, we still need to run wires for the outlets everywhere, except the kitchen, it is already wired for GFI outlets, RG6-u cable, and CAT5-e. The CAT5-e is for security, phoneline, intercom, speakers, ect, whatever we choose to put wherever we choose to put it.


Since we don't have inside walls yet, we can't put the switches in their final loction, so we coiled them up in the general area they will be in. Kevin and Kyle did a masterful job of getting the wires pulled to their correct locations in an orderly and well labled fashion.


Another place with alot of switches is here, next to where the fireplace will be, this is the junction of the entry area, dining, kitchen, and fireplace. Eight switches I think, I dont have the scematic infront of me at the moment, so that is just a guess.


More wires for the lighting, these are for the bedrooms and bathroom.


I have all the wires coming into the power room enter through one area, that way we can keep track as to where the wires are going, all the wires are currently labled on both ends for what they do and where they go. I showed Kevin how to make a basket weave of the wires so they get closer, taking up far less room, and stay much more orderly.


Just below the nicely ordered wiring we have this spaghetti mess, we'll get it wired in and pretty soon.


In the trusses I had Kevin build this cat walk, it is the trunk for all the wiring, keeping the wires as neat and orderly as possible, once inspections are done, a lid will be placed over this, and all the wiring will be well shielded.


Looking up to the trunk line, you can also see the Reflective/Bubble/Bubble/Reflective insulation. This is attatched to the underside of the top cord of the truss, creating an enclosed and well insulated chase between the soffits and the roof vent.


Up here in the trusses you can see the bubble wrap attatched to the top corde, and wrapped around the bracings.

Looking over to the sill plate, note the 20 inch energy heel, we can put 20 inches of blown-in insulation at the top edges of the outside walls, most houses don't have this option.

It is amazing how much light is reflected by this stuff, it also stops cellphone and radio signals, I was up here stapling down the wires in the trunkline, and never recieved any of the phonecalls from Mary. It makes for a great tinfoil hat. :)

Paused - Started - Paused - Started - and - Paused Again

Well the weather has been barely cooperative, too much snow, too cold, too much rain, too muddy, and the ground inside froze and heaved, so until I can get the floor to thaw I can't lay the septic lines, water lines, radiant heat.

We did squeeze in between the weather, shingles on the south side of the house, but reference above to know why we haven't shingled the north side.




There is a layer of reflective sheeting beneath the tar paper, it is to reflect the radiant heat so as to minimize the heat transfer into the attic space. The reflective foil really helped warm the guys up when the sun came out, should have been twice the radiant warmth of a conventional roof. The temp where I was standing on the ground, was 24 degrees, the guys on the roof had to take off their coats and sweat shirts.




The style of our shingle is "Colonial Slate," there are reds, blues, greens, greys, and black.

Dec 2 2009

Tons of progress today.
The roof is completely sheeted, and the septic system is going in.

The 1500 gallon septic tank, the field will go out to where the farthest guy is standing, three rows of chambers across more pics of them tomorrow.


Here is the trench on the inside for the sewerlines.


Here is where the sewer lines exit the house and enter into the tank. (Which in this picture the tank hasnt been dropped in.)


An inside look at the living dining and kitchen, note the roof.


I climbed the neighbors hill and took a pic down into our valley. And a nice shot of the greenhouse too.


An end shot of the house looking towards the bedrooms. Note the black loops, those are the chambers for the septic field. Also note the finished roof...ok so not finished, but it is sheeted completely.


And a pic from the valley up to the house and the hill behind from where the other pic was taken.


And a pic of the kitchen end and utility room, the big gapping hole under the small roof, will be blocked up awaiting the garage, then it will become part of a connecting walkway forming the south side of an enclosed courtyard.

November 30th

We have our trusses set, and they are sheeting it as I type.

The first truss going up, they set the orange beam before I got there this morning.


This is only the second month that the crane operator has been running a crane, we were a bit nervous when he showed up, never seen before, braces, and a heavily bandaged finger he had severed recently. But he did an OUTSTANDING job moving those trusses around.

The final truss on the main house beeing set.

The end truss on the master besroom being set.

And here they are sheeting the horth side keeping in mind that the plywood leaning against the house are full 4x8 sheets. Not bad of a height for a one story house.

And a look inside while they were still setting the trusses.