Tag Archives: Insulation

QII HERS Credit Now Allows Open Cell Spray Foam

Posted on 19. Dec, 2011 by Rebecca Firestone.

This news flash about a seemingly obscure topic is of immediate importance to all our architect Title 24 clients -and it’s good news for a change. The Quality of Insulation Installation credit is a HERS test that can help design projects to achieve Title 24 energy compliance, and we’ve had a couple of nasty surprises with it in the past.

Apparently, up until around yesterday, the California Energy Commission did not officially recognize the QII test as valid for open-cell spray foam. Our insulation expert James Morshead of SDI Insulation actually sent me an urgent email yesterday with the news, saying:

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Home Insulation and Title 24

Posted on 21. Feb, 2011 by Rebecca Firestone.

Everything you think you know about insulation is wrong. That’s in a nutshell what I got from talking with James Morshead of SDI Insulation, Inc. in Burlingame, CA.  SDI is a full-service green insulation contractor offering “sustainable” versions of several common insulation types, including blown-in, spray foam, and fiberglass batts. I wanted to know about high-performing insulation products that would fit into small building cavities, because that’s often something we have to recommend for Title 24 performance modeling. But it’s one thing to say that a project has to fit R38 worth of insulation into a 4-inch roof space, and it’s quite another to find an affordable product that’ll actually do it – and where using that product’s self-reported rating is also acceptable for demonstrating Title 24 compliance.

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