hi I'm Larry janeski from dr. Energy Saver you know across the United States dr. Energy Saver employees work every day to make homes just like yours more energy efficient and comfortable and with the insulation materials that we use on a daily basis there's a wide variety of different materials that we use we think about the fire retardant qualities of these materials what would happen if there were a fire and so today we're going to be demonstrating that by testing a lot of these different insulation materials with this torch and really pointing that flame right at that insulation for a worst-case scenario to see what would happen first we're going to test fiberglass batts and as you can see fiberglass just melts away and yields to the flame and it will allow the front flame to get to framing members now let's see when we turn the fiberglass bat around if we had fire from the the heated side of the house which the paper goes to the heated side well what would happen there and we can see that we would quickly have a fire and that is a problem now we're going to test some blown fiberglass insulation and we don't expect it to be a lot different than the fiberglass batts and sure enough it's not as you can see the flame is burning a hole in it and essentially melting the fiberglass away and so if there were a fire this would allow the superheated air to penetrate the walls and get to the remaining framing and sheathing cellulose insulation is recycled paper mostly newspaper and you would think that that would burn very easily but it's treated with a fire retardant and it is not burning at all in fact we're not getting a hole in it if we take the flame away we will see HR as a result of the fire retardant added to this product and let's see if we can burn a penny right on top of that cellulose and there it is we burn that penny and yet the cellulose is intact and so if there were a fire in your walls and attic were insulated with cellulose heat that superheated air is not allowed to penetrate and you're going to be much better off with that insulation now we have a piece of closed cell foam insulation so this is spray foam it's hard it's closed cell foam often called 2 pound foam 2 pounds per cubic foot and let's see what happens to this under the same test so obviously lots of black smoke and when we take the flame away it does not continue to burn so that's interesting it does produce black smoke when something else is burning around it but it extinguishes itself when you take the flame away next we're going to take a block of EPS foam expanded polystyrene foam and we see that it melts not producing the black smoke that we've seen from the open cell spray foam and again as soon as we take the flame away there's no fire at all and it doesn't continue to burn okay here we have open cell spray foam and this is often called half pound foam it's one-half pound per cubic foot and we have a sample here and we're going to see what happens and it's a similar result as on the closed cell foam lots of black smoke and we take the flame away and it continues to burn and eventually goes out so on these spray foams they will burn if there is a fire will they burn on their own apparently not however this dense black smoke comes off of them and that's why there's codes involving thermal barriers and ignition barriers on open cell foam left exposed to living spaces and that they have to be behind drywall and so forth or only used in in places in the house where people don't go here is a sample of what we call Thermax foam this is a polyisocyanurate foam it has a white foil sheathing on one side facing on one side and a foil on the other radiant barrier on the other and it's a different kind of foam and so this is a supposedly rated to be left exposed in places such as a basement little different result is on the open cell foam we're going to try that again and where we are getting some black smoke and we take it away okay and so that's what happens to polyisocyanurate foams now this has this facing and this foil is pretty meaty here that this white white foil so I'm going to just see what happens when we hit this the unprotected edge so we can understand the difference between the foams the polyisocyanurate foam and the polyurethane spray foam so take that away and you can see much different result we don't have that heavy black smoke and it goes out right away in fact it's a white smoke so that's an interesting difference between the two products typically for polyurethane foams you would spray a thermal barrier on here if it's left in places in the house such as a basement such as an attic that people can walk up into or walk upstairs and I don't have a sample sprayed with a thermal barrier but I do have a piece of what's called FSK paper and I'm going to put it over a piece of open cell foam and we will see in the same conditions that we did the other test what happens so we have a different color smoke here and it continues this FSK paper has a craft of backing on it so essentially a brown paper backing I think that's what's still burning under there and we may have to call the fire department for this and you know there's a difference between a thermal barrier and an ignition barrier thermal barrier being if there is intense heat on one side the thermal barrier will prevent the material and catching on fire ignition barrier being that if there were sparks and so forth that it wouldn't would protect from the material catching on fire so the thermal barrier would be the more robust heavier application and the ignition barrier would be less in the codes there's certain areas where you can leave foam exposed other areas where you need an ignition barrier other areas where you need a thermal barrier now here we have a sample of an open-cell foam that is supposed to be it's fire retardant in some fashion and it's called fire stop and it has a formulation that supposedly allows it by code to be exposed where other foams cannot and just now this is a very unscientific test and the temperatures here are this is not a official ASTM testing protocol that I'm using here but we're doing the same thing to all these materials so let's see what happens when we do it to this material so we're holding it there and we can see it goes out right away as opposed to the the other open cell foam that did not so it's probably melting away a little slower and it's going out right away and we don't have the black smoke so that does perform better that's for sure all right are we having fun yet here's two more samples we have a EPS insulation this is a Y EPS isn't it's made by fusing individual beads of foam together obviously it melts away just like our previous example quite quickly but it does not remain burning this is XPS extruded polystyrene foam board and this is made by extruding through a die foam into a shape and we can see we get about the same result and the XPS is continuing to burn and not performing quite as well as the EPS and I'm going to start my building on fire it is continuing and I suspect it would go out except the OSB and my display is now burning now let's check the air Crete we'll see what happens there and you can see that well nothing happens the air Crete is not affected at all none of it is melted away at all okay while the team was editing the video together I have two other materials that I'd like to show you and squeeze in this video this is an amino plastic foam and it is back in the day used to be called formaldehyde foam and this is the modern version and you can see it does pretty well in a fire test I mean it melts away pretty quickly but it doesn't produce the black smoke it does go out right away this used to be called from aldehyde foam and they have greatly reduced the amount of formaldehyde in it these days and there's some different formulations out there used for walls but here this is what I really wanted to show you this is closed-cell spray foam polyurethane spray foam and this is closed cell polyurethane spray foam same material with a thermal barrier on it so it's a sprayed on thermal intumescent coating so just to remind you what happens to a closed cell spray foam when you burn that's what happens with the black smoke and then here it is with the thermal coating on it and into messing coating and that is absolutely amazing you can see that the coating actually grows if you can see that coating is actually swelling up under the heat and that's what intumescent coating does it it swells up and provides a protection against the heat so that what it's applied to doesn't burn so really works well so thermal barrier on closed cell or open cell foam obviously prevents it from burning and really performs great here is a denim bat they make actual bat insulation for people who are allergic to everything out of denim they're recycled blue jeans literally and let's see how that performs well that'll burn your butt wouldn't it not good this is a small sample of fire block foam this is one part foam that supposedly is okay to use in areas where it could potentially burn and as you can see it is burning and is not going out so that's a surprise that does not perform as advertised this one should really perform well this is looks like fiberglass but it's not fiberglass at all this is actually rock wool and it's a mineral wool and as you can see it does not burn at all it's nothing like fiberglass insulation again it looks like fiberglass but this is actually the slag from the manufacturing steel manufacturing process and this material has been heated to 2,000 degrees and there's nothing left in it to burn these little resin to put the fibers together but boy that really performs well and this is actually a can like cover that is made from rock wool we can see that it doesn't burn either mineral wool is very very good excellent performer all right we have tested fiberglass from both the face side in the unfaith side we have tested closed cell foam open cell foam open cell foam with FSK paper polyisocyanurate foam so called a fire resistant open cell foam expanded polystyrene foam extruded polystyrene foam and what we have found is that the clear winner when it comes to fire proofing is these last two which are cellulose insulation by far the winner along with air Crete which is also extremely well performing in a fire and rockwool was also a clear winner now the purpose of this video is not to say that there's no place for these other products that are losing the battle here and our fire tests we know that air Crete and cellulose are absolutely fantastic performers in a fire but you know there is a use for spray polyurethane foam I mean it's expanding qualities allows us to do things in a home and work absolute miracles really incredible there's a use for board foam EPS and polyisocyanurate foam in certain applications we use it in the right place and the right application and we can accomplish some very important things in a home with these products but when it comes to fire proofing now everyone knows what's best if you have a home that you'd like to make more energy-efficient and make some cold rooms warm or hot rooms cool and lower your flue and electric bills call dr. Energy Saver we'd love to help you and help you do it safely you
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