Insulation

Me, blowing in cellulose on the first pass. In this light you can see the partially filled bays. The hose goes back downstairs to the blower being managed by Joe

Joe preping the cellulose and keeping the hopper filled

Joe's tally of our progress, bag by bag (roughly 200 so far)

The walls after our second pass to bring the density up to the 3.5lbs per square foot that we are after. Almost looks like a mattress, doesn't it?

We've spent the last three days insulating the second floor. The process is this:

• Loosely fill each stud bay and rafter bay with insulation a full as possible but not trying to reach finished density
• Once done with step one, go back through and work filling all bays again until finished density is achieved. When you've got it right, the wall feels a lot like a firm mattress.

The way this is done is with two people working on coordination. Joe is on the first floor loading the endless bags of cellulose into the hopper of our blower which then propels the stuff through a long flexible hose that I am managing on the second floor. With me as well is a small switch control that allows me to turn the blower and mixer on and off as needed. Joe has a set of these controls as well.

At the end of the flexible hose is a 4 foot length of pointed aluminum pipe which I use to pierce the insulweb fabric and inject the cellulose. It is almost identical to vacuuming in reverse. It takes hours and hours of work and a lot of thought about what you know is happening in the walls but cannot see once you've started blowing in the cellulose.

Its so great to be doing this work and it is remarkable how it changes the feel of the interior. It is now quiet in a way that is sort of like "being in a cotton ball" as someone described it. It feels really good. Its also neat to be doing work that is pivotal to the whole process in terms of making good on our energy performance goals.