Super Insulated Mountain Cabin

New Mexico Mountain Cabin: Exterior Retrofit Application

Occasionally, InSoFast will get a compliment from a customer who has a particularly interesting project. We recently spoke with InSoFast users, Ky and Celia, a husband-and-wife mechanical contractor team, who are using InSoFast for their cabin retrofit. The cabin is located in the backcountry of Taos, NM at 8000 feet above sea level. They have a unique story about this beautiful remote mountain property,  enhanced with a generational family cabin built with unusual standards.

The quote and pictures that caught our attention:

“Thank you for designing a fantastic easy to use product! You made insulating my 70+ year old cabin possible. The construction is unique, stacked rough sawn 2×6 lumber. We will use your product inside and out to insulate and make this space once again livable. My husband has been in the construction industry for 20 years and keeps telling me how happy he is I found InSoFast!”

How InSoFast came into the equation?

They found InSoFast through a web search to replace that energy inefficient cabin with a 40′ shipping container using our solid wall insulation designed to fit shipping containers. What they discovered was that InSoFast also offers continuous insulation designed for exterior retrofit applications. They loved the idea of preserving the family heirloom instead of tearing down the solidly built cabin. Now they could upcycle the cabin and reduce that carbon throw-away footprint. In our conversations with this duo, we joked that new construction is for cowards, and that their out-of-plumb/out-of-square cabin is a unique opportunity to show off their carpentry skills.

Square, straight, true, and new is easy!

Not square, not true, and old is a challenge!

Celia thinks, as the legend goes, that the cabin was an old lumber camp mess hall. The dining hall was constructed using scrap cuts from the round trunks being trimmed to flat planks, approximately 2” thick x 6” wide, and stacked one upon the other, leaving plenty of spray foam air-sealing opportunities for Ky & Celia. Structurally sound, drafty and cold in the winter, dusty, hot and dry in the summer – not a bad dining hall for lumber jacks, but not so great for a vacation retreat. 

Tell us about your project.

Celia tells us they are doing everything they can to make this cabin energy efficient. She explains, “we can’t help ourselves as professional HVAC contractors and energy nerds- it just seems like the right thing to do. We want a cozy cabin for winter use. When we say remote, we mean remote! In the winter the only way to get to the cabin is to snowshoe in. So energy tight and super insulated to us is important. Not only are we going to insulate the exterior, in our next phase we intend to use the UX 2.0 panels for the interior walls. We have already done the energy calculations, and know the size of the HVAC equipment we will be using.

On the lower half of the project, they removed the clapboard siding, did some structural repairs and added sheathing and house wrap.  On the upper half they replaced existing windows with more energy efficient awning style windows.

The InSoFast was delivered “fast” and the installation was easy.

Here’s what they told us about InSoFast. “The small size and interlocking panel are easy to handle, compared to regular sized 4×8 sheet foam, which are kind of dangerous in the wind and are like a big kite on the scaffold; I can’t imagine what it would be like on a ladder.”

This was a point Celia wanted to drive home: “Our cabin is so out of square and plumb that it was amazing that there is so little waste with InSoFast. So far we have less than a 1/2 box of scrap of the InSoFast panels.”

“Thank you for designing a fantastic easy-to-use product! You made insulating my 70+ year old cabin possible. The construction is unique, stacked rough sawn 2×6 lumber. We will use your product inside and out to insulate and make this space once again livable. My husband has been in the construction industry for 20 years and keeps telling me how happy he is I found InSoFast!”

InSoFast Insulation for Exterior Applications

For use outdoors, we offer the InSoFast EXe 2.5 insulation panel. These panels’ dimensions are 24x48x2.5 inches, and when they’re put together into a solid wall of insulation, they provide a balance of strong energy protection and protection from the elements. The closed-cell EPS foam is non-porous, so the system can serve as a reliable weather resistant barrier that repels water rather than absorb it.

Our products are easily installed with tongue-and-groove notches that connect the panels to one another. A complete system leaves no gaps for thermal bridging, and all you’ll need for the process is a utility knife, a saw, a nail gun or drill, and canned spray foam insulation. The process is intuitive and a seasoned construction professional or DIY weekend warrior can both expect superior results.

The best insulation for the exterior walls for your home is InSoFast insulation. Reach out by calling (888) 396-9677 or by contacting us online if you need assistance with orders, installation, measurements, etc.