The Genius of Phase Change Building Insulation!

this video is sponsored by Hoymiles. Heating  and Cooling represent the largest contributors to your energy bills in fact in the U.S back in  1973 the average home was about 1600 square feet   but by 2019 that had risen all the way to 2300  square feet which means it takes more and more   energy to keep those spaces comfortable whether  it's summertime or winter time and that's why   so much energy and effort is put into insulation  and other Technologies to help lower the burden   that heating and air conditioning imposes and  today we have something really exciting this   is a phase change insulation and this goes behind  your drywall and it's supposed to save you a ton   of money on Heating and Cooling so how does it do  we have a little bit of experimentation and data   to share with you and we're going to break this  all down I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci   let's start with just insulation and its purpose  the whole point of installation is to be a really   poor thermal conductor to be a bad bridge to break  the heat or cool inside your house from leaving   to the outside in the winter time it's really cold  outside so the heat in your house is going to want   to flow from areas of high temperature to lower  temperature and you don't want that because you   have to keep heating that space and you'll lose  it to the outside so if you put traditional bat   insulation or foam insulation that helps a great  deal and the thicker your walls the more it'll be   resistant to changes in temperature but this is  interesting because what this does is it works   in a completely different principle so unlike  traditional bat or foam insulation that help   to be a bad thermal barrier to conducting heat  phase change insulation Works in a little bit   of a different way as you can see here this is a  product by a company called QE Platinum they're   not sponsoring the video but they did send me  a sample to mess around with the first thing   you'll notice is that there's an aluminum foil  outer casing that matters because aluminum foam   oil like this is a natural Radiant Barrier which  means infrared energy from warm objects won't get   past us it'll be reflected back that's why a lot  of homes now will have radiant barriers in the   attic and other areas and we'll get back to why  that's really important during our testing stage   inside of here you've got this and what's really  interesting about this is this is right now a   pretty cool room so it's in a solid state but  if you start to warm this up this would absorb   that energy and change from a solid to a liquid  instead of changing in temperature the same way   an ice cube and a cold drink keeps your drink cold  while absorbing that heat to have to change State   into a liquid before we get into the data and  the testing let's just talk about kind of what   we're dealing with here first of all this stuff  is really durable it's meant to last and degrade   only about two percent in a hundred years and  has a 30-year warranty it also has self-healing   properties meaning if one of these pouches were  to rupture it'll potentially kind of seal itself   back up and even if it didn't the contents are  totally safe and biodegradable in fact fact I   think it's made from like a soybean oil compound  but this particular formulation is a little bit   of a trade secret I'd imagine and it's adjustable  to your needs so when you call this company you   could tell them where you live and they could  create a special blend that melts and freezes   at the exact temperature that makes the most  sense for your house what's really interesting   as well is this is going into your house so fire  safety is a Paramount concern and in the case of   the Kiwi Platinum it has a fire safety score of  five and a smoke and Mitten score of five as well   on the astme 84 fire safety test now the lower  the score the better for comparison spray foam   insulation is between 25 and 100 on flame spread  and 450 on smoke emittance so this stuff is gonna   be the safest thing in your wall if you were to  put it in so the fundamental principle is that   this is almost kind of like a thermal battery in  your wall or in your attic in your crawl space   wherever you put it that charges and discharges  during the day let's talk about how exactly   this works okay really quick before we get back  to the video let me take a quick moment tell about   our sponsor this week Hoy miles and while we are  using Hoy miles for our solar system and give you   a little update our panels are up we're about two  weeks from finally being on grid and being able to   operate and with hoi miles micro inverters each  panel has its own inverter which means that the   trunk is providing AC power to the house instead  of having to put these all in DC and the really   cool part about Hawaii miles is they don't just  make one-to-one inverters meaning each panel has   its own but they make these four to one and two  to one and even six to one inverters so for this   string of 10 panels all we need is two four in  one inverters which will power four and four and   a single two in one inverter for the final two so  three inverters covers all 10 panels they're all   micro inverters each panel gets its own controller  and doesn't have any shading or any other problems   so when you combine the design flexibility of  micro inverters the really high efficiency and   longer life 25 year warranty typically with  Hoy miles it's easy to see why they might make   sense for you so if you're a solar installer or  a homeowner and you want to check this out we'll   have links in the description to see the inverts  that we're using for our system huge thanks to Hoy   miles and you for supporting the show okay now to  understand exactly how the phase change material   Works let's talk about water and what happens as  you warm up water so if we were to start applying   energy like heat to a pot of water the temperature  obviously goes up but then something happens   around let's say zero degrees the temperature  stops going up for a while and the reason is   because now that energy doesn't go to increasing  the temperature of liquid but it goes to Breaking   the bonds that make it a solid to melt it into  a liquid once those bonds have been sufficiently   broken temperature can Rise Again obviously until  100 degrees Celsius now yes I understand that's a   really brilliant system of measuring temperatures  and Fahrenheit makes no sense but let's not get   into that right now all we need to care about now  is that yes the temperature will rise again until   100 degrees then again the temperature won't  change for a while until it starts to go up   again that is the phase change to phase change  water from liquid to gas also requires a ton of   energy and the opposite is true if things cooled  off the temperature of the steam would lower   until it reached 100 and then it would just stay  flat for a while until that steam condensed into   water and then it would lower down in temperature  until it got to here when it starts to freeze and   when it freezes it's absorbing energy but not  changing temperature and this is what the phase   change material is taking advantage of at night  it's really cold outside and your house was warm   so this should be melted and kind of thawed out  and as the temperature outside starts to dip this   liquid would start to solidify but by doing so it  released energy back into the room so by being a   liquid and turning to a solid it'll release energy  keeping your room warmer longer and then later on   in the day when the sun is out it starts to warm  up again and instead of letting that heat into the   house it has to change the phase back to a liquid  before the temperature inside your house goes up   but taking advantage of this phenomenon this small  little pouch believe it or not has an amazing   insulative value as you mentioned before it's also  Radiant Barrier we'll get back to that but if you   had an inch and a half of this material it has  the same thermal mass as a 12 inch concrete wall   so to figure out if this makes sense for  you you really need to have a little bit   of a temperature Delta during the day so here  for example in San Diego our days even in the   winter can reach 60 to 70 degrees and at night  especially this last year's been cold down to   around 35 to 40 degrees at night so that's  a 30 35 40 degree Delta and that is enough   of a range that it can change the phase and  actually be very applicable if you live in a   coastal area or near the equator the temperature  doesn't change very much day to night you never   really get a chance for the battery to change  State and to have value so it might not make   as much sense if you live in those kinds of  areas all right so enough of that let's get   into the testing and the numbers one and brim  my editors went ahead and built these boxes foreign we wanted to make something that kind of resembled  a 2x4 traditional wall so we came up with this   design for a box it's pretty much a perfect  square cube with a 16 inch interior volume with   2x4 framing we had an outside built of OSB wood  and that left enough room for insulation in the   first go we had a control box with nothing it was  just wood two by fours no insulation then we had   traditional rock wool insulation for the second  box the third had rock wool and the QE Platinum   phase change material and finally we had a  sensor outside kind of in the shade to just   measure the temperature outside so here is the  data for the first week we had this running now   the first takeaway was that the installation did  almost nothing because if you look at the control   box that had no insulation that almost matches  up perfectly with the bat rock wool insulation   that we had so that made me realize I think we  had a flaw in our testing because typically that   rock wool is by behind a sheet of drywall it's  totally encased meaning the air can't just move   in and out of it but in our example it was open  bat insulation that's no good because the way that   this insulation works is that it doesn't allow  the air to move and the air is kind of isolated   and the air is a decent insulator by itself but if  you have it open and hot air is able to rise and   mix and move through the bat it'll blend and mix  and perform very poorly as you can see here also I   realized how do we know that the QE Platinum was  doing the work or if it was the Radiant Barrier   that aluminum would provide anyway so we ran this  test again and we'll get to that here in a moment   but if you look at this graph you can see that  the bound the high and low temperature for the   QE Platinum is by far the tightest it never gets  as cold as the coldest outside temperatures or   any of the other installations and it never gets  as hot either but what's really interesting is   how well it performs when it was really hot out  so here on February 9th it wasn't actually that   hot so the temperature actually never was higher  than 71 degrees but inside both of the boxes the   ones insulation and the control it reached about  88 degrees and that's crazy that's a really hot   uncomfortable space you would have to run air  conditioning to be able to accommodate that   but the QE Platinum never even reached above 67.3  degrees which is pretty remarkable never reached   as hot as even the outside air and that's because  you had to melt all of that material before that   heat would then reach the room also if you look at  the Kiwi Platinum you'll see the graphs are very   wide the temperature takes a lot longer to change  and that's what thermal mass is able to do that's   why a big concrete wall just takes a long time to  heat up and one once it's hot it takes a long time   to cool off and the QE Platinum just that little  pouch has a similar looking graph you'll see the   day it gets hot and then it falls off quickly but  the QE Platinum takes several hours later and it   never cools off quite as much I was shocked by  these results honestly the difference in a few   degrees especially for us in the summertime could  be a significant amount of a reduction in air   conditioning use like we mentioned before we had  a question about that insulation that data just   screamed something's off so we ran the experiment  again a second time and here's a stretch of two   days between the 16th and the 17th of February  for us here in San Diego now what's interesting   is this time what we did is we added aluminum foil  to the insulation box so now we had insulation   like before plus aluminum foil the aluminum  foil blocks any air passing through allowing   the insulation to truly function correctly and it  adds the Radiant Barrier component in fact if you   look at the coldest point on that red line down  there there was a point where it was colder in   the Box than it was outside and I think the reason  why is the concrete and the ground and the Earth   was just a little bit warmer than usual and that  radiant heat hit Those sensors whereas inside that   box it was blocking that radiant heat and as  a result the temperature in the Box was colder   than it was outside now again our our sensors  and our equipment are not the highest Fidelity   so take all this to the grain of salt but I think  generally you can start to see some patterns and   the same pattern emerges where the Kiwi Platinum  has the tightest band the temperature variation in   those boxes are just way tinier than the so yes  a Radiant Barrier is an amazing thing so if you   have an attic you have high temperature areas you  live in Las Vegas or Phoenix or Florida a Radiant   Barrier in your attic would be a huge addition  but the cube Platinum takes that to another level   honestly I'm pretty blown away I really want  to add this to my house because if we're going   to go Net Zero I want to use as little energy as  possible especially for running on batteries right   if you have solar and batteries you don't have  to run air conditioning for any longer than you   have to and currently in our house it is horribly  drafty we need to seal stuff up doors are leaky   and there's very little insulation in the walls I  can tell because that house gets hot and cold way   too easily and we can fight back against it so  how much would this stuff cost so speaking with   some people from kiwi Platinum they told me that  their pricing currently is between 250 and 350   per square foot here in the U.S that means the  average 2300 square foot American house which   is 40 by 60 feet and if you had eight foot walls  we're talking between 11 000 and sixteen thousand   dollars including the roof which is actually the  biggest part of the price remember this is just   exterior walls you wouldn't put this on the  interior walls just the exterior walls so not   cheap by any means but the bigger question is if  your house is fully finished you have drywall up   are you going to really rip out the drywall to  add this maybe maybe not for us we know we want   to upgrade some of the electrical we want to do  a gray water capture system we want to insulate   the heck out of our walls and then maybe put this  in and then re-drywall so for us this is going to   be a cost I am going to pay and I want to have  kiwi platinum in all my walls and also the attic   now for most people the most common use case is  going to be putting it in your attic the attic is   a major source of heat and loss right because as  heat rises you're going to lose a lot of heat or   bring in heat from the Sun heating up your roof  so with the Kiwi Platinum material what's really   nice about it is it doesn't really require any  traditional installation all you do is get your   typical blown in or bat insulation and then on  top of that just lay sheets of the QE Platinum   you don't have to staple it down or anything else  you got to get back up there to do some work you   can just roll them out of your way install a  ceiling light and then roll it back in place   and the Q Platinum would have to change phase as  we mentioned before ever changing the temperature   in or outside of your house but honestly as far as  a recommendation it really depends on you how much   your house costs how much your bills are how long  do you plan on living there how badly do you want   to save and be closer to Net Zero this is a very  high end material but what's really cool is this   used to cost even more and they brought the prices  down because what they started to do is roll this   out largely in addicts work with installers get  larger and larger volume reach a certain level   of economies of scale to bring the prices down  and speaking with the representatives over there   they're confident they can reach about a dollar  ninety per square foot continuing to bring down   prices so hopefully that gives you an idea of if  it's worth it for you or not that's hard to say   it just comes down to your own personal preference  but I will tell you I'm going to reach out to Kiwi   platinum and figure out how we can get this in  our house because I think living in San Diego this   stuff would be a game changer I I really think we  could maybe not even need the heating but for an   hour or two a day and I don't think we would need  the air conditioning maybe but for a week or two   a year and with our really ridiculous Energy  prices thanks to sdg e this would be a added   benefit that I think would pay for itself over  time so here's a couple of final thoughts right   as we mentioned before this stuff is safe so if  you were to puncture it or as you were installing   it or put a nail through it you might lose some  of the material behind but it'll dry out and it's   not going to harm anything it's not harmful to  life or to the environment the whole material   is biodegradable and as you mentioned it's also  safe so there's a lot of like ancillary benefits   that go along with it and while the material is  really quite thin it does have some thickness so   you'll have to figure out how your walls are going  to fit how the drywall goes in but that's mostly   a question for the installers and I'm sure I'm  sure as they get more hip to this they're going   to know what they're doing and it's building  codes around the world continue to get more and   more astringent I think materials like this can  really help homes pass those passive standards and   higher Energy Efficiency standards that everyone  is trying to build to so that is a look at the   QE Platinum phase change insulation it is wildly  fascinating and the data I thought just totally   sold what this does and I think it's pretty  amazing I'd love to know what you think would   you want to do this in your house have you learned  something let us know in the comments below thank   you so much for watching as always I'm Rick with  tuba DaVinci and we'll catch you guys next week

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 140,460

Keywords: two bit da vinci, home insulation tips, home insulation options, home insulation installation, home insulation hacks, home insulation tips for winter, qe platinum, phase change insulation, phase change insulation material, better insulation, how to better insulate your house, home heating cooling savings, tips to save on heating and cooling, types of insulation, how insulation works, tips to improving home insulation, The Genius of Phase Change Building Insulation!

Id: Hduqx4ttm0Q

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023