Vapor Barrier Going Up

May 4, 2014 – After taking the last few weekends off from building it was time to get back on track. I was working without Pete for the first time; he stayed in Marquette for the weekend to supply sugar maple logs for a shiitake mushroom growing workshop. The trees were cut from our property and in return for supplying the trees we were given 10 inoculated logs. It will take about a year before they produce any mushrooms, but once they start the logs should be productive for at least 5 years. I was able to make it back to Marquette in time to attend the workshop and I took some photos that I’ll post soon.

I finished spraying foam around the windows and filled the cavity of the wheel wells with spray foam as well. I was very fortunate to have help from my mom this weekend. She helped stuff extra insulation in the areas the blower hose missed and helped me put up most of the vapor barrier. It definitely would have been a near impossible task for one person; thanks mom!

Initially Pete and I were going to skip the vapor barrier. It’s been important to me to use as few toxic/off-gassing materials as possible within reason and I really did not want to wrap the house in plastic. We’ve also seen several other tiny house builders hand place wool insulation behind the tongue and groove walls, skipping the vapor barrier. However, my brother the builder strongly suggested we put up a vapor barrier. Not only will it help keep condensation out of the walls, it will also increase our R-value which is super important in our climate. Especially since we will be heating with propane and propane is not cheap! So, we sucked it up and bought a 100′ roll of 6 mil poly vapor barrier. I did read on some website that this type of plastic doesn’t do much off gassing and isn’t that toxic; however, I had a hard time finding any sort of information regarding environmentally friendly vapor barriers. Either way, I’m telling myself it’s perfectly healthy because it’s a done deal. I do plan on keeping the windows of the tiny house open all summer to help speed/eliminate construction material off gassing; it is after all a very tiny space!

We’re Famous!

Well, maybe just among Tumbleweed Tiny House blog readers.  I was recently interviewed by fellow tiny house builder and blog writer Jenna Spesard.  She was originally planning on writing a short piece on us using wool insulation, but instead decided to change the focus to mine and Pete’s future farm plans.  I have been following Jenna’s building blog and it was fun to chat about our future plans.  Thanks Jenna!  You can read Jenna’s post here!

We’re Insulated!

April 6, 2014 – The tiny house in insulated!  But only because we have good friends that will let us borrow their truck for a day and a half!  I reserved an insulation blower to be picked up Saturday morning and we left for my mom’s house Thursday evening because we were expecting a snowstorm on Friday.  We were originally planning on taking the truck to my mom’s to take her winter’s worth of garbage to the dump, but because of the impending snowstorm and our very bald tires we decided it would be safest to take the car.  However, on Friday it dawned on me that maybe the insulation blower would not fit into the back of our rather large Volvo wagon.  My mom called and confirmed that the insulation blower needs to be loaded into the back of a pickup truck with a forklift and it stays in the back of the truck during operation.

My mom called our friend Paul, who came over with his brother-in-law and a truck to move the tiny house previously, and asked if we could borrow his truck.  He said we could come get it in the morning as soon as he was done plowing.  Meanwhile, we realized we left a full box of insulation back at our apartment an hour and forty five minutes away.  My plan was to drive back to the apartment and get the insulation in the morning if it was no longer snowing.  We ended up getting about 15 inches of snow on Friday, but it was clear by morning so I ran back home for the insulation.  Pete was able to pick up Paul’s truck and go get the insulation blower.  He ended up getting back to the tiny house about 10 minutes before I did.

It took us a few mintues to figure out the blower; of course no one at the hardware store knew how to work it.  By 11:00 we were up and running and we finished up at 8pm. We have a few areas where we need to hand place the insulation and we need to go back through and make sure we have enough insulation behind and under all the junction boxes.  Originally we were going to hand place the insulation behind the tongue and groove like many other tiny house builders have done; however, my brother strongly encouraged us to put in a vapor barrier and so hand placing was not an option.

Now that we are pretty much fully insulated the next step is to put up the vapor barrier and prepare for tongue and groove.  Our lease on our apartment was initially up on April 19th, but because of the super long winter we’ve had we decided to extend our lease to the end of May.  The tiny house definitely won’t be done by then, but my goal is to have the tongue and groove completed by the time we’re living in the tiny house.  We’ll then have the rest of the summer to install kitchen cabinets, appliances, closet, and a ladder.

Due to work and family comitments, we’ll be tanking the next two weekends off and if it hadn’t been for Paul we would have had to wait three weeks before getting the insulation in.  Thanks Paul! It feels great to have accomplished such a big step!  🙂 By the way, we didn’t end up even needing that box of insulation that I drove home to pick up!

Pete vacuuming out the previous person’s cellulose insulation.

Compressed wool insulation.

Insulation blower full of wool.