Advice on wall insulation

Hi all,

I am in need of some advice regarding diy wall insulation for my currently uninsulated house. The situation is like this: The house is 80y/o, wooden frame, stucco siding. My main concerns are minimizing wall damage, and minimizing fire-spread risk.

For these reasons, I had wanted to go with blown-in mineral wool, but the olny 2 brands I could find (Rockwool and ThermaFibre) have discontinued their blown insulation. I’ve heard about using perlite for insulation, but it seems that it’s a bad idea for drywall due to how loose the grains are (drill a hole, lose your insulation), and the only advice for binding it is to use concrete, which is probably way too heavy (and permanent) for use inside drywall. I also can’t add insulation externally because of the stucco siding.

I’m really at a loss here. I feel like my requirements aren’t so unusual that there isn’t already some product or technique out there to cover my use case, but I can’t find anything still in production. If anybody has any ideas whatsoever, I’d love to hear them.

UPDATE: I did start looking into the sheeps wool recommendations, HOWEVER, in that time I found scrap mineral wool available from ATS that I’ll be able to use as loose fill. Thanks for trying to help, everyone!

rouxdoo ,
@rouxdoo@lemmy.world avatar

Loose-fill insulation is not great in vertical applications. If you can afford it get spray foam. Otherwise you’re probably best off with basic fiberglass batts.

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar
Hazzia OP ,

YOU!! ARE A LIFESAVER!! Thank you very much!

ThrowawayPermanente ,

You’ll have to buy a machine to heat and mix the chemicals, but two-part urethane foam insulates like crazy and only requires small holes in the wall.

Hazzia OP ,

Isn’t urethane foam really flammable though? That’s why I’ve been avoiding it, fiberglass, and organic types of blown insulation.

legopika ,

Fiberglass isn’t flammable? Or were you avoiding it for some other reason?

Hazzia OP ,

Okay, my mistake I did forget it was inflammable, but yeah, there are other issues with using it for my house, like rodents using it as a nest, and it disintegrating after a few years, which would require me to open the walls to extract it later. Longevity was another reason I was leaning towards mineral wool and perlite.

weariedfae ,

Fiberglass insulation is not inflammable (which means the same thing as flammable), it is fire-resistant. But yeah if you’ve got the money mineral wool is really good.

Hazzia OP ,

But my problem is that the only mineral wool manufacturers I know of have discontinued their loose fill products, hence the post

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • All magazines