Building Insulation

It gets costly to produce in large amounts. I would like to see more suitable tress planted where feasible.

The cork oak tree takes 25 yrs before cork can be harvested from it. The trees have to be cared for to insure good sheets. Can be only harvested every 9 yrs. It takes a while for the tree to recuperate and grow new bark. Would be a very costly insulation.

There are plenty of cork trees in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Northern Africa and now even in China. Nevertheless this is not the point because the insulation cork sheets are made of granulated cork with a polyurethane binder. This granulated cork is made with the cork wastes coming out from the Natural Corkstoppers production So it contributes to complete the full use of cork from cork harvesting to cork by products. Furthermore the price can be reasonable and the product is natural based and it has already prooved to be efficient in sound and impact noise insulation.

About 60% of the worlds production of cork goes into wine bottle stoppers. The other 40% sure would not be able to handle the worlds construction trades. It would take 25 years to show an increase in production of cork to provide the amount needed. A large investment in land to produce it.

It is expensive, but nice on the feet (bare ones!!)

We have laid Marmoleum, with cork insulation in the new kitchen, really really good, but not cheap!!

It depends on supplying source and you must not forget that iits for a life time.

"The building engineers and architects should be more sensitive to the "green" cause."

The cork insulation and suppliers should be much more sensitive to the "fire prevention" cause.

Corks is already a fire retardant by natire due to its very slow combustion.

There is already a shortage on cork for bottles, now you want it as insulation material.

Insulation efficacy is not that great either: 0.040 W/mk

Where rock-wool easily reaches 0.034 and EPU and EPS goes down to 0.027 (depending on density)

It exists as a replacement for those who believe that it is better for nature is you use natural resources, I'm not that convinced as the cork needs harvesting, processing, glue and transport.

Just use EPS as the characteristics are great, saving more fuel on house heating, and as the density is less, use less fuel for transport.

Here we are talking about different things. Either you are concerened with the environment or not. As to the less fuel for the transport you must remember that both products pay for its volume not for its weight. Its like the old joke: "Which one is heavier one ton of iron or one ton of cotton"

You pay by the volume but a truck consumes more if the same volume has a higher mass.

I'm concerned about environment but I also know that the big chemical production plants active in western Europe are way less polluting than those small manufacturing units in India.

The big companies move out of Europe as the inspection gets worse and laws strengthen up. In their economic calculations the cost reduction of just throwing away waste (in the nearby river) in stead of treating it and reusing, is one of the most important factors, together with the option of using way underpaid people without decent personnel protection.

My standpoint: using synthetic insulation is less polluting than the natural equivalent. Both in production and use.

I concur - while it is a (slowly) renewable resource, its insulation capability is not all that great, and it is both expensive and in relatively short supply. And while it does combust slowly, as someone pointed out, it DOES burn. Other, cheaper, more readily available choices do not. So; close, but no...