7 reasons I used Rockwool insulation at my house.

hey guys welcome back to my house under construction this is what i've been calling the real rebuild project i'm on a critical stage right now i'm in the installation phase and in fact my sheetrock comes in two days we're gonna start hanging the rock on the walls so this is a perfect time to give you a tour of my insulation show you which products specifically i used and why i use them there and in this video i'm going to give you seven reasons why i chose rockwool for the majority of the insulation of my house minus two minor areas where i did a different type of insulation today's video is sponsored by rockwool let's get going [Music] all right guys so first off let's talk about the type of insulation that i used as i mentioned earlier this is rockwool bats now if you're not familiar with rockwool rockwell is a mineral wool insulation if you look at their commercials they basically say look this is made from rocks and the beauty of rocks is that rock is a very long lasting material and it also has because it's made from rocks some natural fire uh resistance tendency so for instance if you just take a standard household lighter and you were to try and ignite this you're going to notice that it will not burn if you did this to a lot of other materials you will ignite them and this one is not going to burn that cool so fire resistance is a big reason why i like rockwool but one of the things i also like about it is that it's relatively straightforward to install now my house was framed on the exterior on 16 inch on centers which means that these bats right here are a friction fit bat now this is unfaced and i like unfaced bats because then i can deal with vapor and air separately but it also means you got to watch these details like this right here i've got an electrical or pardon me i've got a low voltage outlet down here that's going to be a cat6 wire for ethernet the insulators did a great job on this by slicing the bat so we'd get full depth insulation in that cavity rather than stuffing it in and having a wire in there now when you're working with it you don't also need a whole lot of ppe which is nice typically you're going to wear long sleeves and gloves now i'm not installing i'm just messing with it that's why i just have gloves on and you're going to wear a dust mask you don't even need a full respirator really just a dust mask in comparison to a lot of products like you think about the guys that are using spray foam in a house you have a giant rig you have hoses you have respirators you have off-gassing to deal with all those other things with this open the bag in here pull the bats out and you're going to friction fit into each location now one thing i really like about rockwell 2 is that they're telling you the actual bat right on there so this is an r15 bat and this is an exterior wall now if you pan around here and you look at this one this has the rockwool logo on there but no r value this is their interior product this is called safe and sound this is a sound dampening bat and that's really the second thing besides fire that i really like about rockwool is that it's a very sound dead product we're going to do a test a little later in the video we're going to show you how much sound control this is going to give to your house but if you just stand here and i'll be quiet for a second incredibly dead air in this space i don't know if we can get room tone on the sound but super super dead in here and i actually have some guys working downstairs you can't hear them at all and often i'll yell upstairs while this rock wall is in place hey what do you want for lunch or hey come down i got an appointment here and you got to physically walk up the stairs to do it now that sound is going to change a little bit once sheetrock gets in the sheetrock will bounce that noise a little bit but this absolutely absorbs it in fact i actually built my studio out of this and covered with a with a fabric so that it would give us that noise abatement the next thing i really like about this is it's really easy to install yourself if you wanted to do the install yourself now there's really just one main piece of equipment you're gonna have to cut these bats and they recommend using a bread knife the professional insulators that i used i used hill country insulation here in austin texas they did a fantastic job their guys have a knife that they actually sharpen every day or probably even more than once a day it's basically a long bread knife although a serrated bread knife would be best and they're so used to working with it it makes it super easy they're slicing those bats they're cutting and fitting the guys who did the ceiling here had stilts on and man they just absolutely installed the ceiling super fast once you get good at it it's it actually flies on the install so very very quick on install the next thing that i really like about rockwool is that it's vapor open meaning that there could be some drying that could dry through there by having these bats in here i could actually dry through these bats if there was some incidental amount of moisture on the outside of the house that's a big deal for the northern builders who really want to make sure that there's drying both directions through their insulation they don't want a vapor barrier in the wrong spot the next thing that i want to mention about rockwool that i really like is that it's very remodel friendly now a couple years ago i went down to help after hurricane harvey down to houston and one of the houses that i mucked out was a house that had open cell spray foam and that area of sheet rock that got damaged and where those flood waters were it was an absolute mess to get not just the sheetrock out in fact the sheetrock came off fairly easily but to get all that spray thumb out you basically had to dig it all out and because it was open cell foam it had absorbed all that moisture and it was like a big wet nasty sponge pulling that out now on the other hand one of the things i like about rockwool is that it's hydrophobic meaning if we were to take a water bottle and drip some water down this bat right here the water would run off like water off a duck's back it's it's not going to absorb that water okay now we talked about seven pros let's mention three things that could be perceived as a con the first one that i get all the time it is is isn't this itchy you know i don't find it any itchier than any other product on the marketplace wear gloves put long sleeves on and it's really no big deal and the other thing i like about it is the fibers on this are very heavy and dense and so when i'm walking around in a house like this that's been insulated there's not particles in the air in fact if you kind of look at the sun's rays coming through the windows you don't see particulate matter in the air and i feel like some of the other i don't want to say their names but some of the other insulations that are out there in the marketplace they do have some of that particulate matter that's as light as air and kind of floats around so for instance if i go in a standard attic that's been insulated on the flat with some type of blown in material i it's absolutely mandatory for me to put a dust mask on because with my dust allergy it's almost triggered immediately when i go into that space on the other hand i've been in my house here under construction for a solid week and a half with this rock wool in and i've had no problems at all now i'm not installing it like i said i should be wearing a dust mask if i'm installing it but in this case i've had no issues with my allergy for dust triggering it's a very heavy particle and so it falls to the floor fast compared to the floating particles another downside i had to think about for this house was this won't stick in any locations which means that this friction fit bat is going to work great and stay in place but ultimately it's going to rely on the sheetrock to keep it in place on the other hand in my attic where i used rockwool right in my rafters i had to do a very good job of pinning it into place i used some strips of some cloth and i also used some tiger paws which is basically a metal clamp to hold that in place but i had to think about how it would hold also in the band joist areas of my house that's the areas where i've got insulation in my floor joist where my floor joists come out and stop on my walls that'd be an area that spray foam would work because it's going to stick in there but bad insulation needs to be pinned in there now that seems like it'd be a downside but in fact i think it's actually a benefit to not have it stick because i think i want that remodel friendliness you know i'm thinking about this house as one that might get passed down to a future generation you know i might have grandkids that live in this house someday if they remodel i'd like for them to be able to take that insulation out do what they need to do change the wiring do whatever and put it back if i were to use spray foam in that place it would have been locked in place on that band joist the other downside that i want to mention is there's no air sealing benefit to this material so we can't put this into an area that was leaky meaning if i had an outlet on this exterior wall and that outlet wasn't sealed i could get air flow through this insulation now that is something you need to keep in mind when you're building the house and in my mind the biggest thing you need to do is do a good job of all of your air sealing prior to insulation and don't rely on spray foam or other insulations as a crutch to air seal when really insulation should just be holding that heat or that cold back and should not really be necessarily for air purposes now i am talking out of both sides of my mouth here though because right below my feet in the ceiling of my garage which is underneath my decking here i use closed cell foam up against the bottom here the reason why i did that was i did want a little bit of that extra air sealing benefit between the house and the garage and i also wanted to make sure that my insulation was going to stick to the underside of my subfloor so in the long run my entire house is about 90 plus percent 95 percent rockwool but i've got a little bit of closed cell at my feet here where my garage ceiling has been insulated with three inches of closed cell foam and there's one other spot in my house which is my pop-up stairwell where i only had about four inches of total depth and i wanted to be able to get as much r value out of those possible so i insulated that with closed cell but in the end i am really really happy that i did rockwool everywhere and you're going to notice that basically every interior wall of my house has rockwool on these walls you're going to see the r value and on these walls you're going to see their logo meaning that's their safe and sound bats and that's going to be the last thing that i want to mention here today is how to bid this project if you've got insulation coming up definitely ask for rockwool fantastic product i mentioned all seven of those benefits that i think really set it apart from the competitors but it is more expensive sometimes than standard insulations so don't just have them substitute you actually want to ask for rockwool by name and lastly consider insulating all of your interior walls and potentially most of or all of your ceilings where you've got connected spaces in my bedrooms in my family room in the rooms that are separating my bedroom my master bedroom let's say from my living room all those made perfect sense for me to do the safe and sound bats and these bats are a little less expensive as safe and sound than they are the true insulation bats on the outside of the house so for a little bit more incremental money a ton of benefit on sound hey guys one other thing that i like about rockwool that i'd mention is i like that you can actually write on it let's say if i was hanging a tv on this wall and i needed to make a measurement i could actually use a sharpie on here or milwaukee markers which i actually use all the time and check it out you can you can draw on that insulation it holds it holds it real well which means that it also takes paint really well and this is incredibly useful for a builder check this out this wall right here actually didn't make this mark but i do need to make this this wall here is getting sheet rock and not quiet rock so i marked a bunch of my walls sr or qr and look that rockwool shows up perfectly with that orange spray paint and takes it really really well and that is a benefit for me as a builder good job rockwool looks like a butt more than a heart not a very good heart drawer am i before we close off the video let me grab my sound meter and i'm actually going to see if we can test what that sound benefit is all right guys little rockwool sound test uh if you just look at my voice when i talk although i am a loud talker i'm probably in the 50s or 60s for my sound for my voice on this sound meter and so when i turn the shot back on let's see what our sound meter reads here all right so it's about 75 decibels when we're a foot or two from it now let's walk up the stairs and we're gonna go to my daughter's bedroom which is literally right above that shop vac if you can look back to see where the shop vac is we're going to go directly above that room and remember we don't have any sheetrock installed we don't have any uh interior doors in place okay so i'm still line of sight on the shot vac but i'm you know a solid 15 or more feet away let's call it 58 decibels now let's go up the stairs and we're gonna hang her right into my daughter's bedroom now that's directly below us remember there's no doorways in place i've got the rockwool safe and sound on my eye joist i've got some sound bats in her walls let's see what the meter says now can you hear that you can't hear anything even with my good ears i can barely pick up that shot vacs running downstairs the the sound meter cuts off at 40 decibels so it's going from 70-ish 68-70-ish to below 40 on the sound meter 30 decibel drop no doors installed whatsoever that is what i was telling you about sound attenuation incredible product all right guys that's really it for today's build show hopefully you learned something about rockwool that you haven't before these guys have been a show sponsor for me for a long time but one of the things i like about these guys is they've allowed me the freedom to use other types of insulation wherever i thought was best in the project and at this house i could have used whatever i wanted wherever i wanted but i chose rockwool as you saw for about 95 of my house and i'm so thankful i did this is a really good product i'd highly recommend it for your house for more information from those guys i'll have a link in the description below uh and if you're not currently a build show subscriber guys hit that subscribe button we've got new content here every tuesday and every friday follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 241,596

Rating: 4.9305596 out of 5

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build

Id: a1jPx9xQeXk

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021