A common attribute among high-performance homes is a well-insulated wall. The code minimums for R-Value will depend on where you live but regardless of climate…
Too Much Insulation?
As we’ve written about before, there are major issues with only using R-Value to assess insulation and your overall thermal envelope. In this post, we’ll…
When Building Your Way is the Right Way
Stefan Milkowski and his family care deeply about building structures that are functional, durable, and beautiful. So when the time came to design and build…
Building a Climate Resilient, High Performance Home
The climate crisis is changing how many architects design and build homes. Extreme weather impacts everything from a home’s location to building material selection. One…
Caution: Foam is Not an Air Seal
If you are using spray foam as an air seal for your home, you will have problems down the road. Spray foam should never be…
DIY Van Window Covers
The importance of using high-quality window covers in a van conversion cannot be understated. Their use is four-fold: temperature regulation, sound dampening, privacy, and theft…
R-Value, U-Value and a Common Insulation Myth
In the insulation world, we all get caught up on R-Value, despite its shortcomings (of which we’ve written before). Another thermal performance measure worth attention…
A Tale of Two Climates
Yestermorrow implements Havelock Wool in Vermont and Utah Editor’s Note… The Yestermorrow Design Build School is one the coolest places to learn how to build…
Who Can Install My Havelock Wool?
We get this question a lot. The immediate answer is “You can!” We’ve gone to great lengths to make our insulation DIY friendly, especially our…
Real People, Real Wool, Real Walls
Our friend Jon insulates his workspace in the mountains of western North Carolina Jon, what’s the background on this project? We live in the mountains…
Common Applications for Havelock Wool
You asked, we listened. Here are detailed architectural drawings for some common applications for Havelock Wool insulation in your home. To produce these drawings, we…
Wool Innovation with Sonoma Wool Company
We’re not the only company that loves wool and understands its advantages over synthetic, man-made products. Amy Chesnut and her team at Sonoma Wool Company…
Moderate Energy Retrofits
As a building material company, we attend some pretty cool industry conferences. These are typically in-depth events designed for trade professionals like architects, builders, and…
Sustainable Building Science in Action
If sustainable building science is your guide, how would you build? One clear example is the Vali Homes Mews project in Phoenix Arizona. A Bit…
Vapor Barriers and Moisture Management in Vans
After insulating over 30,000 vans for the past 9 years and partnering with over 300 professional van upfitters, we’ve learned a thing or two about…
Meet Brett from Chewy Design Co – A Havelock Wool Partner
Ever wonder who the professional van upfitters are that use Havelock Wool? We’ve met a lot of them over the years and everyone has a…
DIY Acoustic Panels for Walls
Havelock Wool absorbs sound incredibly well. This performance characteristic is often overlooked as insulation’s main job is to insulate. However, insulation can also help create…
Discovering Mold in Your Walls – Part 1
“You better come over here…. we have a problem in the closet” And with that simple statement from my wife our odyssey into mold removal…
This Is Not Cheap Insulation
Havelock Wool insulation is not cheap. We would certainly argue it is full value and inexpensive when you account for everything it does (and does…
Saving Money with the Inflation Reduction Act
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed into law last month in Washington is a huge step forward in combating climate change and addressing our country’s…
Mold Free Living – Another Havelock Story
Huge thanks to Rachel for sharing her Havelock story with us. Hi Rachel, Please tell us a bit about your home project. How did you…
The Havelock Wool Insulation Calculator
How much insulation do I actually need? This is a common question we get from homeowners who are at the beginning of their DIY insulation…
Is there a best practice for insulation installation?
There is one in California where the state has instituted QII (Quality Insulation Installation), a procedure that ensures insulation and air sealing have been properly…
Meet Salt Vans – A Havelock Wool Partner
A great aspect of van life is meeting the people that make up this vibrant community. At Havelock Wool, we are fortunate to do it…
Building Science meets Time-Honored Building Technique
Timber Arched is definitely one of our more inspiring building partners. We were lucky enough to collaborate with them on a recent project and learn…
Havelock on the Build Show Build
We had a ton of fun traveling to Missouri to help Jake Bruton of Aarow Building and architect Steve Baczek with their Swofford Project –…
A Cool Passive House Project with Havelock Wool
In so many ways, this project represents the holy grail of the healthy building movement… a homeowner’s desire to build better, an architectural firm willing…
Builders are Beginning to Change the Game Too
We got this in an email from a home builder just last week… “We do a lot of work in-house but have always sub’d out…
A Conversation about Healthy Building…Non-Toxic Insulation and Other Important Topics
As a company trying to improve the health of our built environment, we field many questions about non-toxic insulation and how to build a non-toxic…
Understanding Building Codes
Building codes are important for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that failure to meet code can create a ton of…
Air Barrier vs Vapor Barrier
Do you need an air barrier or a vapor barrier? This is a heavily debated topic in building science. In this post, we’ll outline the…
Unvented and Vented Roof Assemblies
As our following in the residential insulation space grows, we receive more and more questions about general building practices. One topic that is particularly popular…
Installing Havelock Wool Insulation in a Vintage Airstream
This blog was written by Tom & Delmara of Ramona the Airstream. Back in the first weeks of our renovation in the demo phase we…
An Airtight Home
Building a healthy, high-performance home can be a daunting task. Advancements in building science have created many different approaches, techniques, materials, and yes, opinions on…
What is a Thermal Bridge?
So you are ready to insulate your living space and R-Value is top of mind. And rightfully so, it is the most widely accepted measure…