This post absorbs still-relevant content of withdrawn post Working With Cotton Insulation Batts. At March, 2026, recycled denim as expensive wall insulation or sound treatment is a dead market. Thick batts for floor insulation are no longer sold anywhere.
Some cotton batts continue to be sold at Home Depot, labeled Henry UltraTouch. "R13" and "R19" bags under-fill 2x4 and 2x6 walls. Under-fill is from irregular thickness and extreme difficulty of cutting-to-fit. Odd circumstances are not served by powerfully-stamped perforations. Parting to pass wires is impossible. With my reporting, I seek to discourage all others from thinking that cotton batts are somehow "green."
My experience with cotton batts has relevance now, only as an element in my only experience with a deep energy retrofit.
The deep energy retrofit began right in 2008, with a ground-mounted 3.5 KW PV array. The array safely beautifies and might fully electrify a 2.5 acre farm. It seems that the now-old air-source heat bump needs expensive deep-winter electric resistance heat backup. A good ground source heat pump should now be afforded.
Proper weatherization of the home to support this early-adopter heat pump energy independence is to my credit. I hope that the air-source heat pump has never again needed backup of electric resistance heat, and that no grid power has been needed. In this there as been need of an additional investment in large battery capacity. I hope to learn soon whether all of my work has been durable, and that net-zero has been attained.
Making Right Out of Fright
So much work in home weatherization is with starting conditions that are beyond challenging.
Who would go here?
My worker-willingness was observed as a child, where my father, a poor farmer in Minnesota who grew up with horse teams, likened me to the much-appreciated and rare
I wonder whether worker-employees can have the needed motivation. I think that, rather, unasked initiative is punished.
Fixing everything on the main floor, attic and roof took 274 hours in the Fall of 2011.
Here are the many details of these repairs as PDF captioned job photo albums:
Here are photos of main floor, attic and roof starting conditions:
Large attic floor pits exposed first floor walls to attic temperatures. Here, drywall was grouted about a chimney well.
Attic photos, work in progress:
Here are achieved conditions in the first floor and attic
174 hours of epairs in the crawl space were done in Fall of 2013
The found condition in the crawl space was blocked by a no trespassing indication.
Very heavy cotton batts hung down 6" from floor contact against twine restraint, there was zero insulation value, Brave workers persisted against common sense, and an invoice was paid. The lasting contribution was only a thorougn new Visqueen ground cover.
The found all-steel HVAC supply ducts were left horribly leaking, draped with R19 fiberglass batts. The duct insulation batts added much to a feeling of confinement. The same with R11 batts generally wrapped around copper water pipes.
See that steel duct fittings, wyes, take-offs and reducers hang from 9" rips of 1/2" plywood. after perfecting co,p;ete coverage with insulating jackets, hoist to jam an eye bolt through a 1" hole in the plywood, and pin with a 5/8" dia length of resilient farm property tree branch,
Intimacy of flex ducts with the overhead plywood rips will discourage mouse habitat, I hope.
Someday, say in 25 years, the flex ducts will need replacement. It will be easy to unpin the steel fittings to bridge in new lengths of duct,
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