Reflectix, EZ Cool and Radiant Barriers

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Puddlz

New member
billintomahawk said:
Looks like a nice alternative at an affordable price. If it was installed doubled you would still be under half an inch(10mm). And R 30 plus a possible mini dead air space.

Have you tried soaking it? Does it hold water? Says it's closed cell.

I have never seen this stuff, is it new?

bill
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EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE - reflect 97% of radiant energy, perfect RADIANT BARRIER. R- value up to 15.67 ( with one layer), up to 20.10 ( with two layers).
VAPOR BARRIER - Unaffected by humidity and moisture, mold resistant can be used outdoor/indoor.
SOUND BARRIER - excellent sound deadener material.
SUPREME QUALITY - 5 mm closed cell polyethylene FOAM (not a cheap bubbles) sandwiched between PURE ALUMINUM (not a polyester film) on both sides. Easy to install, easy to cut. Strong but lightweight.
FIRE RATE - Fire rate Class 1 / Class A, NON TOXIC - will not irritate skin, eye or throat. Non allergic.

Be advised that this has a double aluminum sides, I used spray adhesive and hardcast tape to keep it secure and created an air barrier between interior space and exterior walls.

By no means am I a professional but this works IMO
 
W

Wrinkledpants

2017 144WB 4x4
Puddlz said:
Gotta love internet people, can you provide your opinion sir, I share off mfr's listings not to up sell a product, this is what I tried
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The website for Insulation Market Place has insulationmarketplace2018@gmail.com listed as their contact email. The insulation being sold on Amazon appears unbranded except coming from this company.

R15 out of 5mm of reflective insulation is unheard of. It looks to me like this company is peddling some off-brand reflective barrier with insane specs because they can.
 
M

Midwestdrifter

Engineer In Residence
To be fair, an assembly with air gap will often have around R2-R3 per inch with reflectix. The issue with radiant barriers is their effectiveness is a 4th power of the hot side temp. And they only work on direction due to the air gap typically. So in cooler weather the R value of the assembly drops precipitously. And without an air gap they don't work at all.

Then their is dust on the reflective surface, which drops the effectiveness even further.
 
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gs850gx

Active member
Now that the temperatures are colder here I would like to determine a meaningful way to measure heat loss in my van that is using multiple layers of EZcool and air gaps. I would like this measurement to be useful to intererested members here so am asking for ideas on how to do this that it might be considered meaningful. I have thermometers, non contact thermometer, electric heaters (750 & 1200 WATT), and the 16000 btu gas furnace available to me to figure this out. What do you guys think?
D
 
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billintomahawk

Guest
The electric heater of known energy consumption and a strata temperature measurement would give you some ideas but there are so many variable depending on the state of your build.

Is the van empty or built?
Is the cab area walled off or open(the windshield?)

There is a lot of wisdom in axiom in van insulation that, "You don't need more insulation, you need a better heater."

Also an uncomfortable fact, heat rises whether you like it or not.
And cold feet suck.

bill
 
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elemental

elemental

Wherever you go, there you are.
gs850gx said:
Now that the temperatures are colder here I would like to determine a meaningful way to measure heat loss in my van that is using multiple layers of EZcool and air gaps. I would like this measurement to be useful to intererested members here so am asking for ideas on how to do this that it might be considered meaningful. I have thermometers, non contact thermometer, electric heaters (750 & 1200 WATT), and the 16000 btu gas furnace available to me to figure this out. What do you guys think?
D
Click to expand...
I think you need a measure of the energy required to maintain a given internal temperature (in a fixed 3d point in the van) under a given ambient condition (air temperature, solar radiation exposure, and wind). Your energy measure could be using a Kill-o-watt meter if you have 110 VAC electric heaters, or a manual timing of run time/duty cycle of the 16000 BTU gas furnace (assuming it has only one heat output level). However, to understand the benefit of your current insulation you would have to have measured your van under the same conditions with the same tools prior to insulating it. Perhaps the 110 VAC electric heater/Kill-o-watt meter approach would be most comparable to other forum members, albeit not as scientific as some might like due to a lack of control of ambient conditions.

I made a brief attempt to do this when I was building my van, but found it difficult to repeat the ambient conditions in a scientific manner and I decided (for me) the value of the exercise wasn't worth the cost of getting it as right as I wanted to.
 
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Midwestdrifter

Engineer In Residence
For a van in the wild, it is not possible to control the boundary conditions to get a useful measurement. You would need two vans side by side, measuring real time data. Otherwise the results have no value.
 
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gs850gx

Active member
I was thinking of putting the 750 watt heater in the van running continuously and after 3 or 4 hours taking readings of outside ambient, inside ambient, outside skin, and opposing inside finished surface at several locations. I dont know how much could be extrapolated from that but could at least come up with a temperature differential at a known steady input. Might try it with the window insulation in and out. Do have a kilowatt meter so should be able to know the power input. Anything else I should measure?
 
marklg

marklg

Well-known member
I did a similar thing to determine refrigerator performance. If you were to put a heater in the van, running continuously, and you measure both the outside and inside temperatures continuously, or at least hourly and calculate the difference, you could use that to compare between changes. That mostly takes into account the differences in the outside temperature during different tests. I will say though you will need to run each setup for several days, gather data, then make a change and run again for several days. Then you have enough data to average all the temperature differences over time and clean up the noise in the data.

In my case, the outside temperatures varied 30 degrees in any one day and the high temperature varied 15-20 degrees day to day. I was able to average out the temperature differences between outside and in the fridge and see a two degree improvement when adding a fan to the fridge.

Regards,

Mark
 
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billintomahawk

Guest
GS,
I majored in Political Science and motorcycles in college so....

But wait, I've got a heater you have a heater. We use the same KW heater for our test.
Measure temp outside, measure temp inside, turn on heater for two hours.

Remeasure temps in the same places.

You show me yours, I'll show you mine.
We include our insulation techniques.

bill
 
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gs850gx

Active member
Took my little electric heater and kill a watt and gathered some numbers.
Measurements at night with EZCool window covers in place all windows.
Insulation (oops radiant barriers) installed as described earlier in this thread.
No wind variable clouds.
No cab partition or curtain.
Ceiling 100% done
Walls 85% done ( a few places near bottom of walls not insulated yet)
Doors no insulation

Heater on low (300 watts) according to kill a watt. (On floor middle of van) ran 2 hrs to stable temps
Outside ambient 32 F
Inside ambient 42.6 F (bed platform 32" above floor)
Roof: outside skin 25.4 Inside panel 43.2 (directly opposite outside location)
Wall: outside skin 30.5 inside panel 42.1 (directly opposite outside location)

Heater on medium (790 Watts) ran 3.5 hrs to stable temps
Outside ambient 28 F
Inside ambient 54 F
Roof: outside skin 18.5 Inside panel 53.4
Wall: outside skin 28 Inside panel 53

A few other interesting measurements (end measurements)
Dashboard 50 F
Bare metal on back door 42 F
An uninsulated piece of wall near floor 30 F inside and outside.
Floor 40F (factory floor)
Cab headliner 51 F (EZcool 2 layers w/ airspace above factory headliner)

My furnace (did not use for this experiment) is a Suburban propane 16000 BTU in probably about 12000 BTU out. Provides quick heat up even in subfreezing temps. Nice to know I won't freeze if I got stuck in a snowbank some night.

Performance is exceeding my expectations, slept in the van last night very comfortably. (after finishing measurements,

From this I have extrapolated a table (image attached)
 

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gs850gx

Active member
Well it's been a year almost since my last summer performance report re: using multiple radiant barriers to temper the inside environment of the van. The van has seen about 5000 miles of use since then over plenty of bumpy dusty roads. The installation has stayed put and has stayed quiet. The layer of EZ Cool between the metal and the finish materials seems to do a good job of preventing squeaks and rattles at the attachment points of the finish materials. Full description of the installation is at the beginning of this thread.

It is high noon on a hot July day so I thought I would pull some new readings. Van has been sitting in full sun all day with the EZ Cool blocker over the windshield. Other windows are un-covered (front doors, rear doors, and slider). Front windows are cracked 3 inches and my Maxxair fan is exhausting on medium. Outside ambient is 92 F, light breeze, 50% humidity, sunny, van is white.

Now for the measurements:

Roof outside 128 F
Roof inside 93F
Roof inside below solar panel - 92.9

Wall outside 108 F (About a foot below ceiling)
Wall inside 93 F

Floor inside 89.8 F

Bed surface 91.5 F

From these measurement I do not feel there has been any degradation since installation and the van interior is still maintaining about outside ambient.

Just an update for anyone interested.

DEZ Cool.jpg
 
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