If YETI can make a cup that keeps water cold or hot for hours and a cooler that holds ice for hours, then why aren’t we building houses with that same material?
In: 824
Well… You Can!
But there are a few issues that would make the cost insane.
A little background. These cups are actually two cups smashed together, with empty space in between them. And I dont mean air. I mean *empty* space. A vacuum. Literally nothing (or as close as we can get) is in between these two cups, except where they are joined at the lip of the cup. Vacuums cannot transfer thermal energy (gain or lose heat) so they insulate super well.
So why don’t we make houses this way?
Well, if you’re gonna use a more “traditional” frame and wall set up, you’re gonna need to erect a building around the building to suck a vacuum in there. And then your construction workers are gonna need to wear space suits to do their work. To say nothing of the dangerous work conditions this would cause. Not to mention things like windows and doors would ~~ruin~~ severely diminish the effect you’re going for anyway.
Okay, so maybe make it out of bricks made this way? So that’s acutally starting to happen! Its great in theory and works better than traditional insulation (well, when done in tandem) but you still have the issue of losing the effect every point where a brick touches another brick. So ultimately while it is better, the amount you’re gonna spend on it wildly offsets any cost savings and makes it not great.
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