The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Concrete board+12 tiles=a nice hearth

Jotul woodstove prep work concrete pad


Today we learned how a pair of safety glasses can make stuffing insulation above your head a lot less painful.

We also managed to get the concrete pad secured down with all 12 tiles glued in place.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I see you are zippered to the neck--good. It would also help to wear a hat and gloves to go with the safety glasses. It stops a lot of itching. At least you are not using rock wool which is MUCH more itching than fiberglass.

Not snowed in yet, but hot apple cider tastes awfully good right now.

Comment by vester Wed Jan 26 17:09:41 2011

I just had to smile about the safety glasses.

Things like fiberglass and rockwool can itch terribly if you are not used to it. Indeed not something you want to get into your eyes! If you are cutting insulation or applying it overhead, it would be better to use a dust mask as well. Because of their small size and their shape, these fibers can get into the pulmonary alveoli and get stuck there. This can cause pneumoconiosis. Luckily, glass fibers tend to dissolve over time, but I'm not sure if e.g. rockwool does.

Do not forget to brush or wash your sweater. Otherwise you might "enjoy" itching for quite some time afterwards. :-)

From experience I know that you get used to fiberglass at least when you work with it often. I laid up a 50 lb piece of fiberglass (about 30 square meters of fabric) today and infused it with resin, and I'm not itchy.

Comment by Roland_Smith Wed Jan 26 17:10:44 2011
Sounds like you all have had a lot of time working with insulation. I agree with Roland that you do seem to get used to it, although my experience has been that you only get used to it on tough surfaces like hands and not so much when it floats down onto your cheeks.
Comment by anna Wed Jan 26 18:44:08 2011





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