Roselea

Category: Insulation

  • Loading Up the Rafters With Insulation

    We finally restarted our building work on our house again, after several months of rescuing our Financial Crisis caused by the soaring runaway energy prices. We had the delivery of our second-hand PU foam boards way back last year and we have now started making use of it.

    We decided to tackle the section of the roof rafters upstairs over the front door region of the house. This is section B, C and D. Section C is actually a gable internal end to the roof as the rest of the hip roof is the overhanging porch on the front of our house.

    This meant that we had to build an additional internal wooden framework to form the backbone of the wall for that room, and then we proceeded to fill it up with 300mm thick of PU foam boards pieces. Then, the sloping rafters next to this gable end were also filled up with more PU foam bits and pieces.


    It was during this task that we were wondering to how much material we got outside and whether we were using it up too quickly to make it last long enough to accommodate the rest of the whole roof including making sure we had enough to do the Great Room which so far, haven’t had any insulation inserted yet. On conclusion, we decided to be careful and from now on, only put in one layer of PU foam boards in all the remaining rafters until we have done the Great Room and we can know to how much left-over we got. We then can go back and fill in another thinner layer in certain places to fill them up a bit more and use up the last of the foam boards pieces.

    Another aspect that we are having to be careful, is making use of any larger single piece of boards because we need to make sure we can make single “triangular” fillers for the rafters that contains either a valley or a hip. It would be quite tricky to try to insert small pieces, pushing them upwards against gravity and holding them there while the glue sets. Very awkward so hence why we are putting to one side any larger single pieces.

    This stage of our building work will be a long job, not at least because we are also doing our computer work alongside at the same time so we will only write a blog report every so often as we finish major sections of the rafters, like for example, We have done as far as possible for the moment, the B, C and D sections and we have even done some of the E section as well. We will just carry on and drop a quick update now and again.

  • Ground Floor Walls Being Filled with Recycled Polyurethane Foam Boards

    During the last two weeks, starting last Thursday 4th March and on several days, interspersed with other tasks, we have been filling up the ground floor outer walls with approximately 200mm thick of polyurethane foam “seconds”. We hauled out our slicing bench table from its storage corner and connected up the dust extractor vacuum machine and proceeded to slice up all the various pieces of the PU foam boards, all random in thicknesses and sizes as well as having different coverings (most were foiled coated paper but some were glass-fibre impregnated ones). We resumed clockwise around the building, starting at the Front Door and sliced the foam to fit precisely between the wall legs. We also used spray PU foam to help stick everything together and fill in the vertical gaps, to ensure that we had a air-tight block of insulation.
    One of those other tasks, was to build a Homemade Foam Board Shredder so we can tidy up the rubbish we have generated and will continue to do so.
    We have finished the “C”, “B”, the long “A” section and turned onto the “P” wall and now have reach all the way to the far corner of the Great Room and its Patio Window. We cannot go any further because we got our CLS timber storage located here with the high shelf with other lengths of timber planks resting on it. We will skip that bit and move around to continue on the “N” and “M” walls (part of Bedroom 1) and then around into the “L” and “J” and so on.

    Ground Floor Walls Being Filled with Recycled Polyurethane Foam Boards

    Putting-foam-into-the-walls-1

    Ground Floor Walls Being Filled with Recycled Polyurethane Foam Boards

    Putting-foam-into-the-walls-2

    Ground Floor Walls Being Filled with Recycled Polyurethane Foam Boards

    Putting-foam-into-the-walls-3

    Ground Floor Walls Being Filled with Recycled Polyurethane Foam Boards

    Putting-foam-into-the-walls-4


  • Homemade Foam Board Shredder

    Today, we thought we had better build a quick “Home-made” foam board shredder so we can deal with all the millions of pieces of cut-offs we will be generating from slicing down the large boards. Many has unformed bumpy edges and other defects plus also there will be narrow strips left-over pieces as well. We always planned to “throw” this rubbish away under our suspended ground floor (we got 400mm of space to fill with insulation) but the random nature of all these cut-offs meant that it would be very awkward and annoying to try to get them laying down flat and reasonably efficiently connected together to form a good insulated barrier against the concrete foundations so we considered that it would be so much easier to shred this rubbish up and just pour it in like fluffy balls.
    So we took our garden cultivator which had eight rotating blades, unbolted the handles and wheels, screwed together a new framework to bolt the motor and its blades to and then build a box around the whole lot to allow a large “ton” bag to hang underneath to collect the shredding.

    Homemade Foam Board Shredder

    Foam-shredder-Mk1-1

    Homemade Foam Board Shredder

    Foam-shredder-Mk1-2

    Homemade Foam Board Shredder

    Foam-shredder-Mk1-3



    We have to make some improvements as our tests revealed that the foam would get trapped in between the blades so that is the next task when we have a moment spare.

  • Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    On Friday, saw the arrival of the huge load of “Seconds” PU foam boards, all the way from South Wales where an outfit takes spoiled foam boards from the nearby factory and processes then and resells them to anyone who wants them. We wanted it all including the bad parts! By buying everything it makes it slightly more expensive than glass wool, nearly twice as expensive but it is so much easier and nicer to handle than the dreaded glass wool! Plus also, for our walls, the rigid boards are much more reliable and holds its shape vertically in the walls, compared with glass wool, especially the deep amount we are aiming for, over 300mm thick and we didn’t want the wool material collapsing under its own weight after a decade or so. So we found this outfit that packets this spoiled PU foam boards. This time, we wanted as much as he had and could fit on the lorry. We got forty pallets, each measuring roughly four feet by 4 feet and 4 feet high. There were 28 pallets loaded into the main part of the lorry, plus an additional 12 pallets loaded on a second trailer linked to the main truck.

    Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    Insulation-delivery-truck-and-trailer


    It was slightly more complicated because the driver didn’t want to drive down our Loke and also didn’t want to abandon his trailer module in a layby up the road (was afraid that it would be blocked in). So we took our mini-digger with our new Fork Lift Attachment for our Mini-Digger up the Loke to the main Beccles Road and unloaded all the pallets up there and transported them down on our large flatbed trolley. We had the fabulous assistance from all our neighbours, helping to load two pallets on the trolley and getting that down to our property. That was twenty separate trips in all! Phew!

    We landed the pallets all over the place in a random manner, just to get them out of the way and clear the Loke as quick as possible. It took us over two hours to unload the lorry and a further hour to finish transporting the rest! Double Phew!

    Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    Blocking-the-loke-with-Insulation-1

    Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    Blocking-the-loke-with-Insulation-2


    This load of insulation boards will be sliced up and fitted into and between the legs of our wooden walls, filling it up to a depth of around 200 to 240mm deep, and then the rest will be filled up with glass wool. About three quarters of this load of foam boards will be used up in filling the walls, the rest will be used to start the job of filling the roof rafters and we do need another lorry load of seconds again to get that particular job done too!!

    Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    Big-Piles-of-Insulation-1

    Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    Big-Piles-of-Insulation-2

    Insulation PU Foam Seconds Arrives on Forty Pallets!

    Big-Piles-of-Insulation-3


  • Insulation Panels Arrive!

    Our order of ?seconds? of PU (polyurethane) insulation panels arrived today!

    It came on 14 pallets on a long lorry that managed to drive backwards down
    our Loke! They were a variety of sizes and thickness of rejected and damaged
    foam panels, making up a pallet load of 8feet by 4feet and about 4 feet
    tall. Since we didn?t have a fork lift truck on hand (huh!), we had to push
    the pallets sideways off the lorry and send them crashing down to the ground
    and rolling them over into our hole!! We weren?t too concerned about causing
    more damage as all the panels will be needing sorting out and cutting bad
    bits off etc.

    Loads-of-Insulation-dumped-off-the-lorry

    Loads-of-Insulation-dumped-off-the-lorry

    We have now stacked up all the insulation into neat(ish) stacks, a large stack beside the storage shed of smaller pieces (nearly all of the pieces delivered are more than 600mm x 1200mm) and a smaller stack at the end of the hole near the earth mound.

    Stacks-of-smaller-pieces-of-Insulation-1

    Stacks-of-smaller-pieces-of-Insulation-1

    Stacks-of-smaller-pieces-of-Insulation-2

    Stacks-of-smaller-pieces-of-Insulation-2

    Stacks-of-larger-peices-of-insulation

    Stacks-of-larger-peices-of-insulation


    The first use of these panels will be the underground Energy Modules which
    are large hot water tanks to store the heat collected from the Thermal Solar
    Panels on our garage roof. Each of the 5 Energy Modules will be wrapped in
    200mm thick insulation and then buried into the ground under the house. We
    discovered these source of insulation panels and it seems that there are
    lots of rejected insulation panels and so a niche market has sprung up to
    buy these rejects from the factories, take off the good bits (to sell at a
    higher ?normal? price of about £100 per cubic metre) and put the rubbishy
    bits together to sell at an amazingly low price of about £10 per cubic
    metre!! We don?t mind buying these foam panels as it is a very similar price
    to Glass Wool, which is what we were considering using in the first place,
    but being PU foam, it is twice as good as glass wool in terms of thermal
    resistance so having ?bad? bits on them wouldn?t matter, because we are
    using multiple layers of these panels to fill our walls and roof spaces. We
    would of course spray in fresh 2 part PU foam to block any air gas or cold
    bridges.

    The other advantage of these rigid panels over glass wool, is that we will
    KNOW for certain that they will hold upright inside the walls, or in the
    sloping roof spaces, without collapsing after a few years. The wool is not
    very strong and having such a large quantity may cause problems of
    compression over the years of the life of the building.

    So we are rather pleased to discover this source of insulation material, it
    requires more work and time to sort them out, but that is the point of our
    “Real” self build project, we are doing everything ourselves and time and
    labour is no cost to us, hence saving huge amount of money and benefit from
    this massive amount of insulation in our walls and roof!!