Arrowtown house insulation installation underway
Dec0
My major project the last few months at Wastebusters has been Energyhouse - a new house insulation business for Otago. This has involved building the budgets and business from scratch (with able help from Uncle Gary of CBEC), creating the branding stuff and liaising with the Otago Regional Council Clean Heat program.
Last week we completed our first, underfloor and ceiling insulation, projects in Arrowtown. I can report underfloor for 6 hours in a 450mm crawlspace with spiders and sharp bits of wood and tin for company is pretty grim; it was only made bearable by the wit of Gromme and the brilliant Novatherm product, no nasty Pink Batt dust, no nails glue or staples! More about it later.
Mechanisation of the lightearth process
Nov0
I have been doing quite a lot of research into how we can speed up the lightearth/strawclay/lightstraw process for some up coming projects. This video is the best example I can find so far of more advanced production. Exciting stuff.
This video Features Tyler Buck, Tribal Construction and The Jackpine Collaborative.
Wanaka Wastebusters Housing Insulation Project Progress
Sep0
One of my bigger projects at Wanaka Wastebusters in the last few months has been to build up a new business unit to perform insulation installation in the Central Otago region. We are well placed to provide this service as our existing partner CBEC in Northland has been running a service for a few years.
This project includes researching the potential, branding and communications and then forming a team, and putting together the paper trail and doing the quality control as we roll out the service. Initially we will be contracting to the Otago Regional Council to their Clean Heat Clean Air program.
I put some thought into the brand and decided something a wee bit cleaner and smarter than the ‘Comfy Homes’ message out there may be a little more appealing to the Central Otago Audi driver. I really like German trades logo styles as well which tend to be small and authoritative. I settled on ‘Energy House’ which I think sums up our mission, to reinforce (through insulation) that a house needs energy, good energy, and to retain it.
Insulation – Round 2
Mar0
My house is the first house I designed and therefore comes under the ‘allowable mistakes’ section I guess. I mistake is only a problem if is not assimilated into future practice, and of course remedied.
One of the biggest was not sealing the strawbale wall top adequately, combined with the curved and therefore gappy nature of the surfeit it resulted in way too mch air movement through the rafter cavity. The roof is insulated on the exterior of the waterproof membrane so the dew point can not be inside but with the rafter cavity running some brisk natural air-con the insulation never really got to do its job.
So, the problem sat in my draft addled head for many years. How best to inject insulation with the least amount of work and maximum impact.
I found Paul Kennets house insulation project very inspiring but I didn’t really want polystyrene inside the house where it could rain down through the micro gaps in the T&G ceiling. But the method made sense.
My belief is that an unwanted singular thing can be a problem, waste I guess – but a lot of an unwanted thing is normally a resource I started looking for insulation options from the wastestream. It didn’t take long to find bedding grade polyester fibre insulation offcuts through the Christchurch waste exchange Terranova. Toby and I needed a shipping container so as it was travelling empty I took a day to fill it with free insulation in Christchurch and ship it down.
So the last few months has been the occasional session of ripping up 30m3 of insulation and blowing it into the roof space with a Ryobi leaf blower on suck (over 200kmh muzzle velocity!). Kinda noisy and mindless work but it already seems warmer.
Clients
