By: Bill Downs, Sales Representative - Architectural Products
I read a lot of books and see a lot of movies. One of my favorite authors is Lee Child. He has a series of books using a main character named Jack Reacher who the author describes as 6’5 and 250 lbs of muscle. Hollywood decided to make a feature movie about one of the books in the series and when I heard this I was somewhat excited that one of my favorite characters was going to the big screen but I was also nervous because the movie is never as good as the book, right?
One of the most specified roofing insulations is Polyisocyanurate (ISO) which in the specification comes off like the Jack Reacher character with a published R-value of 6.0 per inch and towers over the other rigid foam insulations. When you read the information about ISO it seems so impressive. Like the character Jack Reacher, ISO’s size may not be inflated but its performance is.
Only 12 hours before writing this blog I received an email. The email was about new testing information completed by Building Science Corporation (BSC) and stated that understanding the variables which impact the R-value of insulation is important in order to specify an appropriate in-service R-value. The R-value of insulation is dependent on moisture content, age of insulation, and in-service temperature. Wait…wait…wait…WHAT? I’m going to copy and paste this next paragraph because I feel that Dr. Todd Bergstrom says it best in his email:
“New testing by Building Science Corporation (BSC) has been released which confirms the impact of temperature on Polyisocyanurate (polyiso) insulation. The often quoted polyiso long term thermal resistance of R-6 @75F is actually close to R-5 per inch when tested at mean temperature representative of a winter condition. This lower R-value also does not account for a further reduction in the R-value that occurs as the polyiso insulation ages and loses blowing agents over time. The performance of polyiso is in quite contrast to Foam-Control EPS insulation which has an increase in R-value performance when the mean temperature is representative of a winter condition. And of course, the R-value of Foam-Control EPS does not drop over time since there are no blowing agents to lose over time.” Read the report: www.buildingscience.com.
Back to my book character. The first sign of trouble for me was when I learned that Tom Cruise had been cast to play the part of Jack Reacher. He’s a good actor don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of his movies but come on he’s 5’7 and maybe 170 lbs. Jack Reacher is supposed to be 6’5, 250 lbs. It’s a lot like the Polyiso’s published R-values versus the in-service R-values. On paper this character towers over its competition but in person, just like the movie, it doesn’t live up to its legend. The movie was OK, definetley not as good as the book but Tom Cruise’s performance was not as good as the hype.
I would compare EPS Roof Insulation more to Bruce Willis in the Die Hard Movie series. Just like EPS he is predictable and does what he is supposed to do. There’s nothing fancy about him, but he gets the job done. EPS Roof Insulation’s R-value does not drop over time like the other rigid foam insulations because there is no off-gassing of blowing agents. EPS backs that up to with an impressive 50 YEAR WARRANTY covering 100 % of its R-Value.
One of the best lines from that Jack Reacher movie is when Tom Cruise is standing in the street surrounded by several men and he says, “JUST REMEMBER, YOU WANTED THIS”. Well, the fight is on, EPS vs ISO, maybe like their insulation they’ll run out of gas.
