Friday, November 20, 2009

Talking About Insulation

What is that stuff in the attic floor bays?

If you are lucky enough to have insulation in the floor bays of your attic, what is it made of? If you are really lucky, you could have cellulose – stuff made of old newspapers. Cellulose insulation looks like dirty cottony paper-pulp. You are also lucky if you have fiberglass (that pink cotton-candy-looking stuff.) These, fortunately, are the most likely things you will see in your attic floor, besides dust.


You might find one of the older insulating materials, UFFI. If you see it in an attic floor, it looks like gray Styrofoam. UFFI (Urea formaldehyde foam insulation ) does a great job of insulating. But, when it was put in houses in the 1970s, it was found to out-gas enough formaldehyde to make people sick. It was outlawed in the 1980s. That was long-enough ago that the offending gas has dissipated. So, if you had UFFI in your house in 1985, you were pretty unhappy; now, it is a good thing.

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