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?

Question

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

Answer 1

Insulated cups like that use vacuum as an insulator between layers.

Manufacturing insulated solutions like that on a house scale would be hideously expensive, complicated to maintain.

Insulation works on the principle of the three things: Conduction, convection and radiation.
Once you lose the vacuum, free convection takes over and actually transfers heat relatively well compared to materials with low thermal conductivity
In all, its much simpler, more cost effective to just use a material that is suitable for the scale of what you are doing