How does fiberglass insulation work on pressurized propane tanks? Can I use it to get through this winter? Next year I'll box it out and get a little more creative.
Tank Insulation
- Thread starter chuck172
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I'm going to have mine sprayed with Corbond next summer......... come to think of it, what DONT I plan to spray with Corbond?? 
LOL!!
LOL!!I covered my two 500 gallon tanks with blankets and sleeping bags purchased at the local thrift store. It works pretty well, however it worked MUCH better once I built a 2x4 frame over the tanks and then screwed 2" blue foam board to the 2x4's. I sealed the joints with tape as I could feel hot air leaking out. My tanks will hold heat from 180(f) on a monday morning to 155(f) on a thursday nite with no further input from the the EKO-60. I need more insulation and it's in the plan. Both tanks are in an insulated building and it stay about 85(f) in the 16x16 shed.
use the search function here on Hearth to look up cellulose fiber insulation
easy to put around a tank [that has some kind of box around it] with a rented blower- conforms to all sorts of odd shapes, and is more effective than fiberglass at preventing the portion of heat loss that happens due to convection of air within the insulation itself. plus, it's basically a nearly all recycled material
easy to put around a tank [that has some kind of box around it] with a rented blower- conforms to all sorts of odd shapes, and is more effective than fiberglass at preventing the portion of heat loss that happens due to convection of air within the insulation itself. plus, it's basically a nearly all recycled material
Are there any negatives in using blown in cellulose fiber insulation? Seems pretty easy to box in the tank, buy the insulation, rent the blower from Home Depot.
machinistbcb
New Member
I just blew in cellulose around my tank. It worked great and went quickly. I blew in 28 bags in a few hours. Right now I am using ther tank for DHW only. I start at 180 degree on saturday and the following saturday I am at about 145 degrees.
chuck172 said:
I've used the stuff extensively in rennovations, and it's got a lot of advantages
the only thing I can think of as a caution is you need to make extra sure you don't have water leaks, as that'd nix the insulation's effectiveness, and once you blow all the insulation in, it's a bit of a chore (and a mess) to get it all back out, fix a leak, and then put it back
OH- and the other thing is DENSITY. If you just blow it in very fluffy, it will invariably lose "loft" over time and settle towards the bottom, leaving the top of things uninsulated. Not a big deal as long as you anticipate it and have your tank compartment set up to be able to peek and add more later. Or you can try to emulate the "dense pack" techniques used by pro cellulose installers to insulate buildings with a high initial density of cellulose (look on the cellulose mfgrs web sites for weight/ to volume ratios to achieve to avoid later settling.
subject to those "how tos" it insulates REALLY well; the parts of my house that were done with dense pack cellulose stay far warmer and less drafty than the parts I'd done (carefully and properly) with fiberglass before I learned of cellulose
Could you give me a ball park figure on how many bags I would need to insulate one boxed in 500 gallon propane tank?
machinistbcb said:
SO you are getting your DHW for one week off of one fire? How are you transferring heat from the propane tank to the DHW? A superstore tank? How many people in your household?
What size pressurized tank are you using?
chuck172 said:
google something like
cellulose dense pack density
('cause I am not remembering off the top of my head)
to confirm the weight/ volume ratio (density) of the cellulose you need to achieve/ aim for in order to prevent settling
that google will probably also point you to some interesting articles on use of the material and installation blowers in general
then do some figuring out of the cubic volume in your space between your tank and the inside perimeter of the compartment around your tank
run the math on that, and then that'll tell you how many pounds you need
then you can apply that to figure the bags/bales of cellulose that you will need
Warning: do wear good dust respirator, and do not blow cellulose under conditions where you're perspiring heavily, or you'll look like a gray version of the abominable snowman as little fibers adhere all over you (you don't need to ask how I know)
When I was researching cellulose for my attic I learned that some brands use sulfate compounds in addition to the borates to make it non-flammable and to keep insects from inhabiting it (boron kill insects). The 'Cocoon' brand that LowesDepot around here sells is one of those. I don't know if it's a trivial issue or not but I think of sulfates as corrosive. Not going to be much humidity around the tank unless there's a leak that you don't detect for a while but why add one more thing that can go bad. National Fiber uses only borates and I went with that since that's what my drywall supplier sells for the same price but he delivered my 90 bags and put it on the porch with a telescoping boom at no additional cost since he was bringing the drywall, too.
The chart on the bag I have left over suggests that one bag will fill about 25 cu.ft. But that is after settling from full fluff condition as blown in loose in an attic. I noticed when blowing into corners and under some framing that it seemed to 'pack' in a little when you force it with the nozzle, like the dense pack done commercially. Probably not as dense though, since they use water to moisten the cellulose in that technique.
Wear a mask. Very dusty business. Borates aren't particularly toxic to warm blooded animals but why fill your lungs with it. No itching!!
All bets are off on R value. The temperature differences in this application, especially outdoor installations, are way different that the standard definition of R values. For outdoors, I'd just use the universal constant Pi(3.14) times what you think is adequate.
The chart on the bag I have left over suggests that one bag will fill about 25 cu.ft. But that is after settling from full fluff condition as blown in loose in an attic. I noticed when blowing into corners and under some framing that it seemed to 'pack' in a little when you force it with the nozzle, like the dense pack done commercially. Probably not as dense though, since they use water to moisten the cellulose in that technique.
Wear a mask. Very dusty business. Borates aren't particularly toxic to warm blooded animals but why fill your lungs with it. No itching!!
All bets are off on R value. The temperature differences in this application, especially outdoor installations, are way different that the standard definition of R values. For outdoors, I'd just use the universal constant Pi(3.14) times what you think is adequate.
DaveBP said:
the "damp spray" cellulose isn't the only way to achieve dense pack, it's merely the one that's gotten most attention in recent years, particularly because it has the appealing ability not only to achieve the density, but also to basically allow installation of cellulose in partially-built walls before you sheetrock, which would otherwise require additional materials and some adept technique.
here's how a pro told me to achieve the right density to get the good R-values and avoid settling, without any need to moisten--
get your blower rolling along happily (in terms of the feed rates of air and cellulose, each of which are independently adjustable), so that the hose is putting out a nice almost dense but smoothly-flowing, liquid-like flow of cellulose fibers mixed with air. (aim the hose back into the blower's hopper, or a spare barrel, as you do this testing and tuning, so that you're not hosing down everything in sight with grey fibers) you don't want the flow out of the hose so "airy" as to to seem like a stream of air with fiber particles mixed in by coincidence, and you also don't want it so heavy on cellulose that it's sort of choking out mostly chunks of cellulose with intermitten burping bursts of air. You'll kind of "see it" when you get that "right" spot in between where it is flowing almost like a liquid. (that's part of the amazing thing about putting in cellulose with a blower- it actually acts a lot like a liquid and gravitates towards and fills voids in the outer envelope that you're filling (unless the voids are big, in which case, it flows right out the void into somewhere else you're not trying to get it)
then put the blower's hose on the bottom of the cavity you are filling, with the snout of the hose actually butted up to the bottom of the cavity. start your blower, and raise the hose a small amount (an inch or a few. the fluidlike air-cellulose will flow out until it hits a density where it stalls in the hose, which you'll sense by the sound and feel of the flow through the hose and the sound from the blower machine. then ( when you sense the stalling) and only then, raise the hose a small amount. if you have a wide cavity, do this a bunch of places side by side before you start letting any of it accumulate too deep.
by doing this, the blower is helping pack the density for you, in a way, and to a density, that you'd never achieve if you try to use it as if it was a firehose and you were just trying to spray the flow onto/ into something
hope that description helps; that technique that I was taught has certainly worked well for me, in that the walls I've used it in did not settle, and they stay warm and draft free.
machinistbcb
New Member
Yeah 1 week, probably more like a week and a half if I let the tank get down to 120 degrees. I am using a 40 gallon superstore with 3 people in the household, and I am using a 1500 gallon tank.
Brian
machinistbcb said:
WOW- as someone who's in the process of planning and building my system, this is encouraging news--please tell us more specifics about how you have the superstor tied into your 1500 gallon tank-- do you have a preheat coil for the cold household water running through the 1500 gallon storage before entering the 40 gallon superstor (so that you're getting several bites at the apple at heating the DHW at a couple of levels/ stages), or are you simply using the hot water from the 1500 gallon tank to push through the "regular" heat exchange coil in the superstor?
chuck172 said:
Hearth in general, and this Boiler Room in particular, blows my mind with the wealth of deep understanding of theory, breadth of practical experience, and range of pionneering ingenuity & enthusiasm, and it makes it exciting not only to receive any of the above, but to offer back whatever one can from what one has done. It's like design/ invention by virtual collaboration, which sure beats frustrated solo trial and error!
machinistbcb
New Member
Nothing fancy for the DHW, just another zone with a zone valve. I would like to at some point add some coils in the tank for DHW and also solar, but that won't be for a while. I still have my hands full with finishing everything up before snow falls.
Brian
chuck172 said:
I asked the same thing of the manufacturers and vendors when I was using cellulose to insulate my previously TOTALLY uninsulated VT Farmhouse attic about 10 years ago
I'd been thinking of carrying the bags/bales of cellulose up into the attic, tearing them open, and scattering them about.
the MFGs and distributors all consistently and emphatically explained to me that the "bales" or bags shipped and sold for contractors and for retail are compacted to a degree that is actually MUCH denser than yields the best insulation (R-value per inch), so as to make the stuff compact and really dense to ship, ... but much denser than makes for best insulation value
So-- both to achieve best R-value of insulation, and to not use more cellulose (material $$$$$) than reasonable, you want to rent a blower, and follow the dense=pack technique described above.
Rick Stanley
Feeling the Heat
DaveBP said:
Dave,
I'm in Wells, Maine and am doing a Garn installation soon. Garn is quite paranoid about corrosion and doesn't recommend cellulose for that reason. I'm curious about the National Fiber stuff you speak of. Where did you get it from?
Thanks,
Rick
I talked to the Garn rep at Common Ground and he was not familiar with the ammonium sulfate issue. He just knows that Garn doesn't like cellulose against their metal. I suppose you could wrap a blanket of thin fiberglass batt around the tank and fill the rest with cellulose. I don't think the choice of fiberglass or cellulose is a big deal unless your boiler is outdoors where any heat loss from the boiler is truly lost. It may not be a big deal either way but with the huge temp differences between the boiler and below zero nights the fiberglass is more likely to start convecting heat through where you might (ought to) have some very thick sections. I'm putting my system in the basement and will actually use the thing for summer DHW so I want it insulated well to keep my basement workshop from getting too hot in summer.
I'm going to go put some nails in damp cellulose and compare it to nails in damp papertowel. Kitchen science triumphs over all doubt (well, maybe not ALL doubt).
But to answer your question, I got it at Dube's Drywall Supply in Biddeford just up the road from you on Rt. 1. A little short of the cutoff to Rt. 111 at the turnpike entrance. Their toll free number is 1-888-333-9559.
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