What is the best wall & insulation combination for -1°F winters and 80°F summers
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What is the best wall & insulation combination for Colorado?
Jacob Johannessen
July 2, 2020Last updated: Sept. 16, 2020
I will be building an Ecohome in the middle of Colorado where it snows for a third of the year, is freezing for about half of it, and has a couple warm summer months. With all the different building and insulation techniques I have come across, I still have no idea which would be best for my specific climate. If it makes a difference, I intend to have some sort of slab foundation with air heated piping, as well as a wood burning stove. Thanks in advance!
Most of Colorado has semi-arid climate conditions, and your temperatures aren’t that extreme (says the Canadian, eh..) so it isn’t a particularly difficult area to build.
The slab you are talking about is most likely theLegalett air heated floor, I don’t believe there are any other manufacturers, and that is a great start to an efficient and durable home, we just built our recentDemo House on a Legalett slab air heated floorlast year. I would first point you to this page about insulation –
What is the best insulation for a home?
In there you will learn the different characteristics of various insulation materials, the decision then comes down to product availability and price, neither of which we are really familiar with. Our preferred insulation types would generally be mineral wool or natural insulation materials like wood fiber board, hemp batt insulation or dense packed cellulose which we recently used when building our recent demo house on a Legalett slab.Prefab hit houses may be something worth looking into, they've advanced so far that you can often get a better final product than site built homes.
Other important considerations for a high performing wall would be a proper air barrier and avoiding thermal bridging in the wall assembly. Those links will give you a good starting point, and to really get your head in the game we have thisvideo of building science made easythat will help you further choose a good wall system. I hope those pages help, have a read and feel free to pop up a follow up question if it isn't all clear.