(upbeat music) - I'm Kevin Brennan from Brennan, Brennan Insulation and Airtightness, and who I am and what I
am, you guys will know, but one of the things
I take great pride in is being a Certified
Passive House Tradesperson. I look at being a Passive
House Tradesperson as the top of the pyramid of the skills
needed in construction. And one of those basis of skills was taught to me very
early on in my career and it's something I take great pride in and innovating and
trying to get to the top of my career chain, this is my history. You guys can get some further insight on listening to the wonderful podcasts that Zach put on for me
and it was a great show. So in 2002, I was at the
College of Staten Island and I wanted to get the hell out of here. So I figured out a way how
to get a study abroad program to the University of
New Castle in Australia. I love the culture, I love the place. I had a great experience
and when I was there, I noticed that there
was just a kind of like a greater appreciation for the work and hands that were out there, and when I came back and
I guess took a step back, I realized maybe I wanted
to get into the trades. So at that time right after I came back and I had a decent amount
of debt when I came back, 'cause I took one too many
trips and had too much fun, I said, college can hold
off, I'm gonna take a job, like I wanted to find myself working for a weatherization
agency and if anyone's not familiar with weatherization, it's a nonprofit kind of
like federally-funded program throughout the US that
fixes people's buildings by using air sealing and installation. It's kind of like was a
driver of building science. The next step in that training program that I was involved in, at Northfield, through my jobs as being
an air sealing installer, to the post-inspector,
to the energy auditor, was taking the BPI training. BPI training was great,
opened up the world of building science to me,
really got my curiosity going of how buildings are
built, why they're built, what are the mistakes that they have, how do you solve those problems? And speaking of solving problems, in 2006, I was the very lucky
recipient of a phone call and results on a test that allow me to have the opportunity to serve the City of New York as
New York City Fireman. So especially after these past few days of the deadly fire in the Bronx, you really appreciate that
you get the opportunity to go out and help people
on their worst day. I work in the Bronx and luckily
my firehouse wasn't there, but if we were there, we would have done our best to help those
people at that time. But some of those
problems in that building are kind of air sealing
and installation related, not to really nerd out on that, but the compartmentalization
of that building, probably wasn't where it
really where it needed to be. So I've been a fireman since 2006. I've been involved in Passive House through working for the Association
for Energy Affordability and other places being a trainer and teaching people about Passive House. And in that process of teaching people, I had the opportunity to talk my way onto actual Passive House
projects like Mike's and say, hey, we can do a dense-pack cellulose, it's a core competency of
ours and next thing you know, I opened up a business with my brother, Brennan Brennan Installation
and Airtightness, been going since 2012 and
I've had the great pleasure of being a part of this lovely team, the Passive House Accelerator in 2018, and this timeline is gonna continue on. But while I was preparing
for this lovely presentation, I went back in time in Google
Photos and went through all my pictures of cellulose
and the history that I have. So I'm gonna share some of those
early pictures that I have. So this is a lovely
picture of my good friend, Pete Vento, and my crew
leader at Northfields. There was a weatherization department. That is the cellulose truck
with the hose coming out of the back, the
generator's on the street. I'm up in the attic, blowing installation for the loose cellulose. That's my brother Gerard who
worked for the company as well. He's taking off siding on a cold day. That's asbestos siding
or cement-based siding and not an easy thing to take off, so it's quite a technical skill, but that was the bread and butter of what we did for the
weatherization agency. So our crew was kind of
like a New York City-based, but we kind of like worked on kind of like suburban buildings
in Staten Island. So we did a lot of dense-pack cellulose, you know, unlike what people think are the building typology of
kind of like New York City. And that's my man
Dense-Pack Pete, all right? So we call him Dense-Pack Pete, because that's what he
took great pride in. That was actually a day
where they were kicking off the BPI program, Steve
Thomas came to town, we were showing off all our skills and that's Dense-Pack Pete
there, so he took great pride. Pete works in Energy Efficiency right now. I hope he's watching in the
crowd or sees a video of this, but I send him this photo all the time. It's a great aspect of what
it's like to work on a team and people that don't take
themselves too seriously, but they take their job pretty serious that they call themselves Dense-Pack Pete. So the humility is out of the way and this is what the real job is. The real job is on the
outside of a building, drilling holes on uninsulated buildings or under insulated buildings,
accessing the empty cavities and filling them with
cellulose insulation. Sometimes this process,
do you wanna pre-blow a door and a post-blow a door? We would air seal the building, probably between 30 and 50%, we did a really good job of
a sealing up the building and doing an attic air sealing. So it's a great
opportunity of what we did. So in 2006, I had the great opportunity to join the New York City Fire Department. I was assigned to Ladder 80. This is one of our training photos. Just the where my career
kind of like stopped in energy efficiency,
I geared up my career in the fire department and as a fireman, we work two, 24-hour shifts
a week and then we have like three days off in
between to work in the trades and I've always wanted to work
and keep my training going and build on my career
in energy efficiency, so I was really looking to find my way. While I was trying to find my way, I found my way back to where
I took all my BPI training. This is the Association
for Energy Affordability, up in the Bronx, they had a
lovely energy training center and at the training center, we did all sorts of trainings
on energy efficiency and then when Irene and at that time we started doing workforce
development training. So this is a group of students that come from the Sustainable South
Bronx Majora Carter's group. We did a bunch of training for them. That prop there showing them
how to do some air sealing and we eventually got to do
some dense-pack cellulose for them kind of like a
workforce development program. This is another one of our
workforce development props. My job at the AEA was to be the air sealing installer trainer. So kind of like the hands-on trainer, teaching workforce development and future weatherization employees and current weatherization employees how to do dense-pack cellulose well. And as much as I thought I
knew, I didn't know, right? So the reality was, I
wasn't really well-trained. I was trained on how to do my job, but it was more touch
and feel and tradition, it wasn't a science and
technique as I learned by working in the props
and digging down deep into the process of working there. So we drill the holes,
we fill the tube in, and then we dense-pack each one of them. You can see that each cavity, two by four cavity is fully insulated. So what is a cellulose insulation? Dense pack cellulose insulation and why it's good is in my opinion, it's above 80% recycled content. It is a very low embodied
carbon installation, compared to say, fiberglass
or rockwool or spray foam, some of the other options
that are out there. The beauty of the product is, is that, you're blowing it in and it's
filling the whole cavity, so it doesn't care what
shape or size it is, whereas other BATT forms need to come from the factory and the right size. So proper R-value, meaning the cavity is fully filled with insulation and the R-value goes
from our R3.2 to R four. So one of the things I'll talk about in this presentation is
finding the right manufacturer that gives you the right
R-values to meet those levels. Uniform density throughout
is the key component of the nozzle man or the
nozzle team's integrity. So making sure that the nozzle goes into the right spot,
fills the whole cavity and that you have some quality assurance or ways to check that you're
at three and a half pounds to four and a half pounds per cubic foot and I'll show you ways to check that. There's many ways to do it
and we'll go through that. The picture on the right, you can see that the installation
has been hollowed out of that I-joist two by 12 wall, and that's a Passive
House level, you know, wall for anywhere throughout the world, it maybe a super insulated wall, but you can see how the installation is self-supporting of
itself and that means that it won't settle over time and that the whole cavity is filled
through pneumatic pressure. So here we have a little video
of a tour I took of Igloo. It's a cellulose manufacturer up in Montreal and I'll play the video. I'll play the sound too,
why not, we'll get crazy. So those are the piles of cellulose. It's recycled paper distributed and it goes through a machine. The pile's right there,
undistributed paper, that's the goal of a good cellulose. It comes down to a
certain mix and density, it gets put through
the processing machine. That's the bagger, that's the borate or it could be magnesium. That's the fire retardant
and the rotor propellant of the material, there's the bagger. That's the quality assurance
machine, it weighs each bag. My buddy Garren from Soprema
and it's a fun experience to see how cellulose is made. So we have how cellulose
is made, recycled content. It's a mix of distributed, recycled paper and better quality papers,
undistributed paper, but it's all recycled content
and it's not new paper. And then it goes through
a treating process that grinds it down and softens it up and then it's added into it is, anywhere from like 13 to 15% borate. I personally prefer the all-borate, some of the other aluminum
sulfate, magnesium sulfates, I don't like the corrosive
nature of those products, not like borate is inherently, but it's a road repellent
and a fire retardant. So in the picture here we have Greenfiber down at the lower left, we
have Soprema down at the bottom that says AB, that's All-Borate. We have Igloo's product in the green. We also have the new Greenfiber, sanctuary product on the upper right and then in the middle we
have the Nu-Wool product, I do believe it's out of the Midwest and that's a great, great product. So those are all different
brands that I was able to get to New York City
and use on my projects. So now we have, how do you choose how much installation
you really need, right? So if I was using fiberglass, I'd go to the distributor and I'd say, I have a two by six construction. I've got, it's eight to 1200 square feet and they'd sell me how
many bundles I need. With cellulose you gotta do
a little bit of math, right? So the simplest conversion
is down at the bottom here. We have a two by four and
you figure out, all right, I got a two by four construction,
how many square feet? And what's my coverage rate per bag, 36. That's great when you're dealing with two by fours and two by sixes. In Passive House, we don't deal with two by fours and two by sixes. We're dealing with odd shaped framing, double studs, Larson trusses, I-joists. So it's not as cut and
dry as we may think. That's why cellulose fits really well into the Passive House
world is that it fills the whole cavity no matter
the shape and the geometry, and you have to work out a way to get the nozzle in the right spot. So the two tricks to the trade are the advance coverage chart on the upper left here by
National Fiber and then the Residential Energy Dynamics calculator that I use most often that
helps me to figure out how many bags of cellulose do I need and what density am I going for. The general rule of thumb,
as you increase in size of the cavity, meaning
going from two by four, up to two by 10, you'll
wanna increase the density and I think the maximum density is really recommended as four and a half, but you really don't wanna be below that. So you put it in there,
you get your sweet spot, your contingencies, add
10% just to make sure you have enough material on site. And then these are all the
tricks or the tools that I have. So we've got a member of
my team, Mike Solufo there. He is putting the tube in the wall, right? So what type of wall is that,
that's a wall in a brownstone. So the wall is furred off the wall by one inch, the framing is off. So it's about a four and a half to five and a half inch cavity, depending on how it was framed, if it was square, if it was level. And our goal in dense-pack cellulose is to pack that cavity uniformly
so that we get throughout the cavity three and a
half pounds per cubic foot. So general rule of thumb is you
drill where it's comfortable like kind of like right
at shoulder height. You drill the hole, you
feed the tube up to the top, you pull it back by 12
inches, you set the blower up and you blow out all
the material in the hose and then as you go along,
I'll show you in the video, you go along and then you fill
the whole cavity loose-fill. And then once you start
to slow down the machine, now you're dense-packing at the tip tube and then you're slowly
being pulled out of the hole by friction and pressure and going across and then you're gonna make sure
that you have 100% coverage. So general thumb is if
you don't get the tip of the nozzle down there, to where it is, drill another hole and match with theirs. You can use an infrared camera
to make sure that it's there. That you've accessed every single cavity, especially when you blow
them behind say the plywood, which is tough to know
if you've got the cavity, so that's where it takes a little bit of a nozzle man and backup man, you know, backup integrity to
drill the holes for you and then you also want to keep a bag count as you're going along. So if you know you've done seven bays, you'll wanna know how many bags you've done if you're gonna cross. We'll talk about communications later, keeping the team in line
of what's happening, what's going across there. So why do we install
cellulose as opposed to BATTs? I feel that BATT installation is kind of like an unfair test. I wasn't really a great student, as you can tell by my college career but if I had scored a 95 on a test, I would expect that I
did a pretty good job, that I didn't get too many errors, but to then go through and realize that I got 40 on that
test, it's not really fair. So what is it, is it people, is it process or is it products? And sometimes it's all the above. So if I can do a process that helps me install
it better and easier, I might wanna go with
those products that ensure that the people installing
are set up for success. And that's why I like cellulose so that when I'm insulating a wall, I'm using the pneumatic
pressure of the machine to make sure that it's fully filled and I'm not getting little gaps and errors going across because I've never met a wall that's perfectly straight or
perfectly plumbed or level. They always have little
tweaks and when I get material from a factory that's set up, maybe that has some quality
assurance issues too. So when you have insulation
around electric boxes, they need to be cut perfectly
and stuffed in the back. When you have electrical wiring going through the installation
you wanna make sure that it's split, you should
cut it and you split it. It's not impossible, it can be done and we do do it from time
to time as a contractor. We install rockwool and high
density fiberglass BATTs from time to time but the
preferred method for us is just to do the cellulose, because we find it's a little easier, but it takes a lot of time
and effort to do it right. So these are pictures of
projects that I've worked on. That round staircase there is rockwool being put in a sound BATTs and even though we took our time, it's still not perfect. It still has gaps and compressions. I would say that that's
probably around 5% errors and then the one on the bottom right, where the faced fiberglass R-13 is kind of like squished in
place and just stuffed. I would say that's closer
to 10% to 20% errors. So the effect of R-value's
going down even less. I am proud to see that they did insulate where I think a tub is going,
but it's still not perfect. So what type of walls are we
dealing with most of the time? So most of my work is done in
brownstones on the back state, with Passive House projects
going for Passive House. So in the brownstones are
our front and back walls here are using a two by four stud that is furred off the wall by one inch. Then there's a membrane of some sort. It could be an airtightness
membrane like INTELLO, or SIGA's membrane or
even Partel's membrane or it could be plywood. So some of the projects we work on, the GC likes the plywood,
some of the projects work on, they like the membrane, so we do whatever the team really wants and then we fill this cavity with installation. So this will be a four
and a half inch cavity, fully filled with installation. The hardest thing to get is the space between the studs if we
weren't using cellulose. You can see a better corner drawing here of the cellulose and the
studs and the drywall finish. So this would be from the outside. This would be the inside finish. In this picture we show
how the framing works and how the framing is in place. It's furred off the wall and here, it's done by at least one inch, that's a little tight
to the wall to be honest with you there, maybe it
didn't get that full area. And this is a way that we are showing that near the door there, we're almost at five inches of space behind the door because of framing issues and reasons. So those lovely little
markers there are the PHI, printable kind of like
installation depth checkers. We've been putting them in place just for the documentation
process of Passive House. It lets us know that we took a picture and that we measured the
installation that's there. All right, so we have walls and we have to blow insulation in them. So sometimes on our party walls, where we have a fluid applied air barrier and they want installation
for soundproofing or maybe some gaps, but they
don't need the air barrier that's there or the project's
not going for certification, but they want some extra soundproofing, we'll put up netting and then netting will act to keep our installation at bay. The netting it's
different but it just acts as like a spring to keep it in. So you can see on the left
where it's all blown in, cellulose is a dirty job sometimes, but once it's in, you
can touch every area. You can know the density
of it by touch and feel and then making sure that that nozzle goes exactly where it needs to go. The next projects that we work
on is going behind plywood. So the plywood on some of our projects, it just gives it that extra resilience of during construction once it's up, it's not gonna get damaged. If you go through it, you're
gonna have to take a saw, or a Sawzall or a hole saw
to get through the plywood. Some of the general
contractors we work on, with the risk of the
front and the back wall, they like the plywood, they
like the rigidity of it. Their background is being carpenters, so they like to frame
walls and put up the studs. That man on the right
there is Louie from AEA. He is nozzle man, kind of like, installation blower extraordinaire. He's wonderful with the nozzle. I had a great privilege of
working with him for a few years and they did great work, him and Angela. This is my team, we were
showing the process of that, you have to drill the holes,
that's Eva on my team. She's drilling the holes and then the holes are filled up there. And we got Mike up there
that is going across and in dense-packing that slope, which is probably eight
to 12 inches with the two and a half inch, that's
the installation needle. So these are all done
with the smaller tube and we'll go through
the process, all right. So the picture on the far
left is how you start out, doing cellulose nice and clean,
no dust with a dust mask on. You know, no eye protection on 'cause I'm never gonna
spray cellulose on myself. And then in the, in the middle
is the process of doing it. So there, I'm using an
instillation needle, which is a German X-Floc needle and we vented up into the cavity, that cavity is five and a
half inches, maybe six inches and it's putting the installation
in between the membrane and getting it all the
way up to the top there and I'm using the hard tip
of the nozzle to make sure that it's going in the
upper corners and I have a certain amount of feel
of when it's coming down. And then the picture on
the right is the reality of sometimes you do a dirty job
and you get dirty and dusty. There's been some evolution in there. We use better safety
protocols and Tyvek suits and different respirators just
'cause of the nuisance of it. These are all wall types, just
a little further explanation of them that they're two by fours, furred off the wall cellulose is in here, an airtightness membrane
that's here and the three, four layers are white brick
of installation there. This is a mock-up of a double stud wall that we haven't had the
luxury of actually doing, inside New York City on any brownstones. But the wall that we're building, it's not really like a double stud wall, but it's not furr off. We don't need that same full thickness of the double stud itself
because of the attached building on both sides, which are wall types. So nuts and bolts of dense-pack cellulose. You wanna make sure that
your density is at three and a half to four pounds per cubic foot. How do you keep track of that? It's bag count, it's
square footage coverage, but it's also a quality assurance method of like touching and feeling
when you have membranes, opening up areas, taking
a piece of plywood off and just checking to make
sure that it's done properly and then you can use a
thermal imaging camera to find any gaps or a missed areas. Right here, this was blown a few years ago and they showed that the
installation settled over time. If you have a good crew
that has a good machine, that's been loved and take
care of and has high pressure, the chances of the cellulose settling are few and far between, but
if you're going out and renting a machine from Home Depot
and doing it yourself, there's a very good chance
that that could happen because the rental machines
are just meant for loose blow. They're not meant for, you know, high density, dense-pack cellulose. And I'll show here again
this is a two by 12 I-joist that is filled with installation
and it's self-supporting. This is the holy grail
of knowing if you have dense-pack cellulose
is that you open it up, you take out the middle and
if it can support itself, the weight of itself, you know, 12 inches of it weighing on top of itself, that it can handle the pressure of it won't settle over time. We do core samples as well,
which I'll get into later. So here we have our cellulose machines. This is where the rubber
hits the road, right? So we have a few different manufacturers in the US that we're
very lucky to work with. Krendl, Cool Machines, Intec and then there are a few other smaller distributors that I don't know the name. So from right to left, this is Krendl. This one is Cool Machines,
this is Intec, another Krendl. This one is a gas-powered
machine and then this is the one that's especially
made for IDI distributor, that kind of like, it's your
contractor-friendly machine. Working in the five boroughs, access. We bring our machine
inside so we don't pull up in a truck and just blow from
the truck because of access and alternate side and things like that. So we need a more mobile machine. So either this machine, the cool machine or the other IDI machine would be beneficial for us if we ever
get another cellulose machine. So how do you know if your
machine's working well, right? So all the machines either
work on generator power. They definitely work on either two, 15-amp circuits or maybe even three. My machine that I have works
on two, 20-amp circuits. If they don't have the right
power they don't operate right. So the electricity is very important and then each day when
we start the machine, we make sure that from the night before to the last time we used it, that it was clean, there's
nothing in the hopper. You'd be surprised at how things can get thrown in the hopper
when you're not around on a construction site every
day and even when you are. So we check the inside of the hopper and then we check the pressure. We check the pressure with the
pressure gauge on the right, which checks the pressure
at the unit and then the pressure gauge on the left here checks the pressure of the hose and the unit. So say your machine was making three PSI, but you had a bunch of leaky
hoses or some bent fittings, you wouldn't be getting three PSI at the tip of the nozzle itself. So kind of like the general
rule of thumb is that you want at least three PSI at
the tip or at the machine to ensure that you're
dense-packing properly. This is my machine in my trailer. It has an integrated pressure
gauge that's on there, it lets me know I'm in that
sweet spot of the pressure. And here's a quick video of
how the machine operates. - [Kevin] All right, cellulose
machine is operating, I'm just going to check
power, the pressure, the pressure gauge is
agitating, it's agitating. The shredder is shredding,
the machine is pumping, we're blowing in rockwool,
pumping out into the house, all the way up and in. (machine roaring) - All right, so as you can
tell how the machine operates, inside the machine there's the augers, which chew up the material and
process from a compact state and they start to condition the material. Some of the other
machines have a shredder, which even kind of like
finely shred the material before it gets into what
we call the chamber, the blowing chamber, where the seals are. The seals go around almost
kind of like a riverboat or so, or just a chamber that goes around and then the air pressure gets put across. So what makes the chamber work is the pressure from the blowers. The blowers themselves give it the oomph. So if the chamber that the
air and the material are in, isn't sealed tight, it loses pressure. It's not gonna be a good seal
so one of the maintenance keys is to check your seals
and change them regularly. The other maintenance key is to make sure that your hose is working
with you, not against you. As the material goes through the hose, it's building up friction
and it should break down the material before it gets to the tip. The manufacturer's recommended
at least 100 feet of hose. Some of them recommend 200 feet of hose. So we're always running anywhere from 100 to 200 feet of
hose and then they recommend that you change your
hose every six months. We don't work every day blowing cellulose, so normally ours is around
like every year or two on our frequency, I
keep ours going across. Tubes, all right, so dense-pack tubes. Sometimes you have winter dense-pack tubes that the plastic is hotter and it maybe the plastic is a little softer
under colder conditions, and it gives the ability to bend. And you have summer tubes that are kind of like more rigid and
under warmer conditions, they'll be stronger and not bend as much. The tube thickness is inch and a quarter and inch and a half. My preferred tube is
this Tigerflex hose here. That gives me a decent amount of production that goes through the hose. I am considering getting
the two inch Tigerflex hose. Every time you increase
the diameter of your hose, you increase your efficiency
or your production quite a bit. So from inch and a quarter
to inch and a half, and then we've discovered these nozzles, these X-Floc hardened
installation needles, and they're just a rigid tube that's bent and it helps us get into
those deeper cavities, there's a few more videos that'll show about you what's going on there. Now, this is a longer video. Let's see the dense-pack
process behind the wall. All right, so we have
the different wall types we're working on and you
guys saw this already. - I drilled, I filled
up to the top already and now I'm gonna fill down. I'll stuff the tube all
the way down to the bottom. I know this far that I'm
down four and a half feet. I'll pull up around six inches. I'll the machine and
it'll start packing it up. The whole bay is packed,
loose-filled and now we're gonna densely pack it
three and a half to four pounds. - So you can see I'm wearing
a PAPR and a Tyvek suit there. You get a little tired of getting dusty and blow outs in your face. You'll see the blowout soon. You wear the PAPR just to keep the dust out of your face and your eyes. It makes working a little more easier. - Now I've got air only
coming out of the hose, I'm gonna just take it all the
way down to the bottom again, where we have the bottom
and just that extra pack. - So as it goes in fast-forward
mode, that extra pack, the tube blowing air only
pushes all the cellulose to the side and separates it
through pneumatic pressure and gets it all the
way down to the bottom. So you're getting a
mechanical pack of that, and then getting a re-pneumatic pack on your way up, especially behind plywood. This will follow the
machine all the way back. We're up almost three stories on here, and they're replacing the stairs, which makes access always a
lot of fun, bring it back. Almost 150 feet of hose there
and this is our machine, set up on site inside working on two different power sources. A little quick image of
how the agitator operates. This is dense-pack cellulose,
fully filled cavities, making sure that everything is 100% filled and that's one of our core samples that measures how much
density there is, all right. One of the infrared pictures,
I'm gonna speed up now. Hopefully I get through all this. I know I'm a little backed up on time, but this is a way that we
keep track of which cavities are being next that we don't skip. Especially when you go to
lunch or you take a break. The friction in the machine builds up heat and when you install the insulation in it, it goes in slightly warmer
and the infrared cameras are just a great way to make
sure that you didn't miss any bays or nooks or crannies
or odd framing members. One of the lovely hazards of cellulose is static electricity, one
of the tricks of the trade is to throw a little graphite inside the machine to make it smoother, but on a low humidity
day, static electricity, sometimes it gets you no matter
what and it always gets you when you're least expecting
it and wow, that hurt. And always, it catches you off guard. This is one of the
benefits of doing cellulose is that in a passive house project, it helps you find some of your leakage. - [Kevin] We find leaks and the holes. - There's a hole there. So we've got all the
benefits of cellulose. Now, how do you keep track of density? So this chart was put together
by somebody that I consider a mentor and a friend in the
industry, Bill Hulstrunk, he used to work for National Fiber. The man was a jack-of-all-trades
when it came to cellulose. he knew everything from the machines, to the product, to the
process and really supported the guys in the field
that were doing the work. I was at the national weatherization, kind of like regional
weatherization competition, where it's kind of like
a rodeo and he helped one of the teams win the competition. He tuned their machine,
he checked their pressure and I had a little bit of envy that we didn't participate in it, but they had a really good
coach, so Bill was a great coach. And then knowing where the world was going in deeper cavities and higher densities, he created this chart and
I've been using it ever since and it's been a staple of my practice. So one of the things that we do on every project is we do core samples. I choose an area that
I know is hard to work, either low, high, up
on a ladder that maybe I'll take a mark on the
wall or when we know we took lunch and we'll open up that area and we'll check the density. So we open it up, we
measure it, we weigh it, then we measure the five inch cavity, 69 grams that comes out to
4.2 pounds per cubic foot. So I'm confident that right
here at the hardest level that we have hit our density. This is our density check
station, we use lunch bags, right? So rather than putting them
in and hand stuffing them, we just take paper bags, put them in, paper's paper and stuffed
them back into the cavity and there's no vapor
density change whatsoever. We blew up the chart, we added a logo, but I do give Bill credit
for creating the chart. But it's a part of our
practice and our process. This is mainly here to make sure that nobody throws it out on us really. So here's a quick little
exercise of the technique and the technology of Passive House is that we have a six inch
cavity weighing 102 grams. We would go to the six inch here, follow it all the way down and we'd see what our gram weight is here on the scale and we'd know that at six inches, we're greater than five
pounds per cubic foot. So this is just showing you guys how you would use that
chart, not rocket science, but sometimes you just need
a little bit of handholding. Another video. - We're doing dense-pack cellulose here in the walls and the ceilings. We'll go downstairs, take
a look at the machine. (machine roaring) - Pretty typical of our projects. - [Kevin] We've got Mike
loading the cellulose machine. Now this guys is the Cool
Machine, it's the 1500. We're blowing in Soprema
cellulose from Canada. Very nice product, clean cellulose. It comes all the way through. - All-Borate is the AB, I
think that's the important part of the product differentiator. Jamie's drilling holes
there, opening it up so that when we move to
the next floor, it's open. He's on the second floor,
we're up on the third floor. That's our installation needle. - [Kevin] Our density-check station. - We've got our scale and our
four inch dryer vent pipe. - And Kelly's blowing in with
the ventilator rotary nozzle. We are going in inside,
three and a half pounds per cubic feet, up in the ceiling. Kelly's got it up there, the
ventilator rotary nozzle's a German X-Floc nozzle. It helps to blow in at the end, puts the tube fill, it's a nice process. - All right. This is the X-Floc
nozzle, so in my training, I went over to Ireland
and met a good friend that hopefully I'm able
to get on the show. His name is Roman and he's a German guy working in Ireland doing
dense-pack cellulose and Passive House work and, you know, we just instantly at the
training had like a bond like, oh, what kind of machine do
you use, like, oh, what's this? And we shared knowledge
and back and forth, just by traveling outside of our borders, realizing that there's
other cellulose machines and manufacturers out there, discovering that the
X-Floc brand is out there, you know, innovating and really kicking the cellulose world to the next level of those sticker wall
assemblies and everything. So this is the S-Jet,
the S-Jet is kind of like the two-fill method with
the rotary nozzle on it. The tube goes in and down
just like we would take the dense-pack nozzle but it's doing it at a larger size hose and then
as you come up to the top, you do the ventilated
size, it's dust-free. We have it and we use it quite regularly, but it's a great innovation and project. So this is the ventilator
rotary nozzle in practice. To be honest with you
it works a little better in solid cavities so if
you have two by tens, or two by twelves and you're
blowing small little cavities, like Mike is here, it's
really good at doing that, whereas we're a little bit more used to getting the flexible tube and getting a little more tactical
feel inside the cavities with the smaller dense-pack tubes when we have the open cavity,
say trusses or double stud, or furred off the wall studs. - [Kevin] We have the
ventilator rotary nozzle, show 'em the plunge, pull it out. It's got a little lock,
lock's in, it's got a bag. The bag acts the air lock for the nozzle. It goes in, it's got a curve to it, spin it around Tim, show 'em how it spins. - So he's got the nozzle in the bay. These are solid plywood box golf, kind of like cathedral ceilings. Each one is about two or three feet. - [Kevin] See the bag's inflated. The nozzle's pointing this way. - So it's fully filled, they're done. We'll just take a handful
and plug that hole. - [Kevin] This is the
X-Floc installation needle and you can see how it's got a curve to it and Timmy's gonna poke
it in the wall to show how you get a fat cavity
filled with insulation. - He takes the tube and he's angling it. That's why the tube has
an angle it gives you-- - [Kevin] And he's got it all the way down at the bottom there,
now go to the other side. Beautiful. This is the X-Floc insulation-- - And this one just doing a
different cavity, he's going up. it shows that the tube is going up and up into the right at the top. He can feel it, you can touch it. You know where it is and
it's just a pretty good way of doing a larger cavity
quicker and faster, 'cause cellulose is all about production. I'm doing two and a half inch opening and getting that hard
nozzle into the spot. It helps me to be more
productive than working with the inch and a quarter
nozzle that would be. One of the other tricks of the trade of doing cellulose are
these density boxes. These are two by four density boxes. This is more for home
performance or residential work, whereas you'll be setting your machine up to know what your settings
are, your air pressure and your gate to do two by four walls and how it works is that
this two by four box is two cubic feet of volume on the inside, three and a half inches and
when you blow it a dense-pack, three and a half pounds per cubic foot, it should increase by seven pounds. So you should take that density box, weigh it with a fish
scale or a bathroom scale and then you would know that
it's at the right density. It helps you set your machine up. One of the things we'll
be doing in the future is creating density box
checks that represent our walls either with
INTELLO or say plywood. And then the trick of the
trade is once you blow that density box is that you think you did a good job before you weigh it, you take off the cover and
you hold it above your head. And if you didn't do such a good job, you get to say hello to a shower and then if you did a
great job, you did it. That's the kind of like tradie's, rite of passage, I guess you could say. In our projects, we also do
not only walls but roofs. This is a 17-inch cavity. When we do the 17 inch cavities, most of that's an I-joist, that one. You really have to spend
a decent amount of time, making sure that you get the nozzle in the right spot and
doing those density checks. That's where those installation needles really come in handy. We've done other cavities
that are up to 24 inches. This is a garage ceiling
in a Passive House project in Harlem, a multi-family project. We did 24 inches of dense-pack
cellulose in this area. We've got almost an entire
tractor trailer filled with cellulose and the logistics of it, luckily it was in an overpass and a garage 'cause we were able to store the cellulose in the
garage area and it was fun. And we use some of the membrane to keep the dust down and help us
from having to clean up. One of our other tricks
is to put up membrane as opposed to drilling
holes in the plywood. That gets tedious and laborsome,
we throw up a membrane or a netting and then
we'll blow through that and then we'll peel that
down and put back up the plywood that goes in
there and tape the seams. So this is a trench
method is what we call it. Whereas we go left, we'll go right and we can do almost an entire
ceiling with two trenches and a few holes rather
than having to drill a hole every single one and then patch them, whichever one of those things. The key to getting cellulose machines to work is regular maintenance. Just like in an airplane, hours. How many hours has the
machine been running? And then put your lube in and the gear oil in the right spots and change your seals. The one in the middle is a split seal. When you run your cellulose
machine and you see volcanoing and things that are popping out, it means that you have air leaks and you should change
your seals regularly. The thing I like about the Cool Machine is that it's rather easy to work on. We're able to take out these augers, disconnect the chain, rather easy, change the seals without
having to do acrobatics and getting under a 200-pound machine. And it's nice to work on. This is our setup, our hoses,
they get changed regularly, going across, this is our machine inside. We have a cover making sure that the team that we're working with,
isn't throwing, you know, like putting a screwdriver on
and it winds up in our machine but don't ask me to know how that happens. This is our setup when we had the luxury of being able to park
for a few hours in front of the fire hydrant and
listening very closely, to make sure that you're
not blocking for fire, but this is our set up there. Logistics, so having a good partner that could deliver for you is important. Delivering pallets, quick, fast, efficient and then having a good crew
of guys ready to offload and get it in the building without too much distress and despair. So we use IDI here in New
York from long island. We have purchased half trailers and full trailers where the cellulose. It just tends to be a little troublesome on the logistics and the
warehousing and, you know, renting a forklift to load the
trailer or the truck itself. The other way to keep track
of how much progress you have is keeping track of
how many square footage you covered and how many bags you've done. The hashtags, the hash
marks on the side here is our daily production. This is our daily pressure tests for PSI. We got 108 delivered, we
had 10 from the garage. This was who was working and
just kind of like a challenge to see if we can beat the
other day's production. Safety, so ORI is not
technically on the list of a respiratory hazard but
it is kinda like a newsome, in that if you blow it every day, it can dry out some of your skin and make it irritated or so. So over the past few years,
as the owner of the company, I've just kind of like
implemented good safety protocols, which means Tyvek suits to
keep the dust off your clothes. So you go home and
you're not covered in it and then the respirators making sure you're either using a
full-face piece respirator to protect your eyes or the PAPR just to make it a little easy to work on. And that goes for not
only blowing cellulose, but also installing rockwool. Everyone's got their Tyvek
suits on, they got their gloves. Their respirators are
on, when you're working above your head and you're looking up, it's very easy to get things in your eyes and you get something in your eye, you're shut down for five minutes. It's a production hazard
more than anything else. Other parts of safety are
this negative air machine. You'll be creating dust,
you wanna control the dust and bring in fresh air
to keep that across. So this is a HEPA
filter, collect the dust, just take a negative pressure. Keep the dust from being in one zone to the other and lighting,
to me on construction sites, lighting is the biggest hazard 'cause even though it's
under construction, they put up temporary lighting, it's never perfect where you need it. So we always have temporary lighting. And the last part is communication, right? A funny picture of the guys
that are able to work with me, but we have these walkie
talkies and we talk like we're at the firehouse,
Nozzle to Control. You got 15 bags left, all right. I think I have a clog,
I think I have a clog. He checks the machine we shut
it down, we purge the machine. It prevents us from having to break down the hose and chase leaks and
communication's important, especially when you work
in with a limited-man crew, somebody falls off a
ladder or twists their leg, you wanna stop right away
and be able to help them. So we work with radios and voice mics and things like that, it's important. And then the last part of the presentation is kind of like the lesson
learned of quality assurance. While walking around with
the thermal imaging camera, checking we missed any
bays or cavities or so. We noticed this cold spot in
our insulation in the ceiling and we were like, what's going on there? And what we didn't realize was that the permanent roof wasn't on. So the roof wasn't on, it
wasn't a permanent roof. It was just a temporary roof on the top and they'd developed a water
leak and the water leak was showing through the cellulose. So then we had to take
out all the cellulose that was up there and we needed to do it. But the thermal imaging camera, kind of like helped us find it and then it wasn't such a big deal 'cause the drywall wasn't
up, it was just a few bags, a patch, a pole and a replacement, just took out everything that was wet. Once they put the final roof on, then we went back and we redid the work. So kind of like the lesson there is that, don't blow cellulose in a brownstone roof unless it has the permanent
roof on or the temporary roof that's the underlayment or something that's a little more durable
than what's currently up there. So I just wanna thank you
all for that presentation. I think I've used all the
time, I possibly had, boom. (upbeat music)
