you can buy wool from sheep farms but it is it not going be in useable condittion. It will be very filthy including having pee and poop on it, dirt from the ground they sleep on, grass sticks. insects in it etc. Plus it will be all matted up rather than soft and fluffy. Fleeces have to be washed to remove dirt and the stink and water protective natural animal body oils. Then “carded” with wire brushes to untangle all the knots and matts. It would take you many months worth of tedious, stinky, itchy, hand labor to process enough wool to insulate a van. Where would you store those filthy fleeces? Where would you wash and dry them? Then store those cleaned materials while you do the carding process? City dwellers are often at a complete mental disconnect as to how much work is involved to process “natural materials” into a ready to use product. But at least now you have a better understanding of one part of the value of the product production cost. Be thankful you can buy it in a ready to install state.
Great info and thanks.
There are other companies selling it, but It appears Havelock does the most advertising. Keep looking. I found a couple doing a search for "companies that sell wool building insulation"
There are issues with wool, but I didn't want to look it up. If I had the money and needed to insulate a van, I would use that stuff NASA uses. It uses air as insulation. I'll find a link
I think all the insulations that are used in air, use air for insulation. Certainly wool and rock-wool, cellulose, fiberlgass, foams, etc. Except for the radiation foils that don't work very well except in space. The insulations I designed for space were many-layered sheets of mylar plated with gold (or sometimes aluminum), separated by light nylon scrim.
It is very thin and has a much higher R rating than any other type of insulation. And, the price keeps coming down. Especially since builders have been using it .
It's very little better... thermal conductivity is listed as .021 W/m-K vs .024 for XPS foam... ~15% improvement for the same thickness.
Get out, lol. I'm siding with NASA
Not a problem. I learned all about processing raw wool fleeces in college. One of my art class electives was Weaving. We were required to create yarn from scratch out of a sheep fleece but also to understand the physical characteristic properties of the fibers as well as the processing. Plus various methods of spinning. A combination of art, design, cultures, history, mechanics, physics, chemistry etc. It was after all “higher education”, not just an easy “A” craft class.
