|
BUILDERS
If you are familiar with insulating a house with fiberglass you
know that it is cheap but nasty stuff. Spray applied, loose fill (dry)
or dense pack (dry) cellulose as installed by Cellu-Spray is a far
superior product. It will make for a tight, quiet, and most
importantly, an energy efficient building. You can rest assured that
you won’t be fielding calls about frozen pipes, mice, mold, or cold
rooms if you choose Cellu-Spray to insulate your project.
By building a tight, energy efficient shell you can reduce the size
of the heating and cooling equipment and use those savings to pay for
the additional upfront costs of a better product. Cellu-Spray can
provide a heating guarantee to your clients and help to size the
heating and cooling equipment.
New Construction:
There are basically two ways that we insulate with new
construction, spray applied or damp spray cellulose or dense pack or
dry cellulose.
Spray Applied
Spray applied cellulose or “damp spray” is installed with water
added at the tip of the hose. We use high pressure hoses and the water
is added in extremely fine drops as a powerful mist. This action
combined with the relaxed cellulose fibers means that when the
cellulose slams into the sheathing it builds up on itself, filling the
entire stud bay. We spray the cellulose past the studs and they are
then scrubbed down with a mechanical scrubber. There is no chance for
any gaps or settling to occur. We use the minimum amount of water to
get it to stay in the bays and easily achieve a density sufficient to
cause the material to stop the flow of air. The finished walls are then
covered with sheetrock. We do not recommend a vapor barrier be added to
side walls since it is an unnecessary expense and gives the wall
assembly more drying potential if there is a wetting incident. 98% of
vapor in wall assemblies is due to air flow and since there is
effectively no air flow through a wall insulated with cellulose, you
can skip the vapor barrier necessary with fiberglass.
National
Fiber will provide a 24hr.
drying guarantee if you use Cellu-Spray Insulation. The only times we
have seen cellulose not drying fast enough to allow for sheet rock is
due to the cellulose remaining uncovered and a source of moisture such
as an unvented heater present in the building. In the winter we do need
the sheathing warm to prevent the cellulose from freezing and slowing
the drying process.
Dense Pack
Cellulose insulation can also be dense packed behind specially
designed fabric which is stappled to the existing framing. We have a
saying that we are "denser than you think" and take great pride in
consistently installing cellulose past it's settled density. We will
not blow in behind sheetrock if at all possible as we cannot inspect
the density easily.
The fabric is stapled on the face and sides of the stud with a
pneumatic stapler and after installation we roll each bay to ensure
that there is no fabric bulging to interfere with drywall. Dense pack
installations make sense for small projects or where there is a lot of
stuff on the floor which would prevent vaccuming or clean-up. With
Dense pack there is more prep time but less clean up.
Retrofits
Cellulose is an excellent material for retrofitting existing buildings.
Typically this is done by accessing the wall bays from the outside of
the building. If the building is un-occupied then drilling through the
interior takes less time and is therefore more affordable. These type
of jobs need to be planned carefully as they use small amounts of
material and huge amounts of time. The best times to access walls in an
existing building is when the siding is going to be worked on. Having
poor performing insulation such as fiberglass in the walls means that
all that material would need to be removed prior to installing dense
pack cellulose.
| 
