Continuous Insulation has been around for a while but is gaining prominence in the market as designers look for improved thermal performance and energy efficiency to provide great overall comfort for building occupants whilst also taking into consideration environmental implications and rising energy costs.
However, as more companies jump on the Continuous Insulation bandwagon, it is important to ensure that you receive the full benefits that this wall what you are specifying is a true continuous installation system or you could end up with a system that claims to be a continuous installation system and appears to have all the components but in fact will not provide the level of performance of a true CI system.
To ensure that you are getting a true CI system, here are two questions to ask of the system you are considering:
- Is the system claiming to comply with the ASHRAE 90.1 standards? If the answer is yes, you should follow-up with the next question;
- Are the required structural standoffs penetrating through the insulation? If yes, then this system is NOT ASHRAE 90.1 compliant because the stated insulation values will not be true, as the insulation does not continue across the structural members as required in the ASHRAE 90.1 standard. See image below that shows a true CI system vs a false CI system:
The R&D team at Fairview has been developing RapidWrap CI for over 18 months to provide a wall system that could meet all the needs of the construction market with unmatched thermal performance. It is fully-tested to NFPA285 and meets the ASHRAE 90.1 standards. The other components of our wall assembly consist of our industry leading products: Arrowhead installation systems (Arrowhead FLEX & Arrowhead LEAN) combined with NFPA285 compliant polyiso insulation (eg, DuPont Thermax) and finished with a choice of exterior cladding panels: Vitrabond FR, Vitrabond G2 or Vitraplate (solid aluminum).
Find out more on our dedicated RapidWrap CI website page.
