Yea, the programs look a lot like a paper tape to me!
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He found Narnia and he’s not going to tell us.
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My (thankfully rare) experiences with fiberglass have left me with no desire to give it another chance to shove delicate silicate strands of pure itching into my flesh with shocking ease. Is the stuff used in insulation different than the kind found in weathered/damaged fiberglass composites, or is this just another example of vermin being able to shrug off just about anything?
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I’m clumsy enough that I wouldn’t want to risk dropping my cellphone into some crevice and having to recover it; but I have some close relative of this thing; and it has indeed survived water, though any alleged ratings are probably a lie; and it packs a reasonably adequate camera and illumination in a ~1cm cylinder on several meters of reasonably durable-ish by polymer coated cable standards tentacle.
It doesn’t even come close to the motorized, armored-conduit, low-light-vision inspection camera the guys who came in to redo our main sewer line when it was attacked by roots rolled out; but it probably cost 1% as much.
I love the elegance of the old, fully passive, fiber-bundle endoscopes: elegantly simple concept, precision optics, all that nice stuff; but those are exactly the features that have just gotten hammered on price/performance by the fact that mechanical complexity is expensive; while silicon complexity is crazy cheap if you are buying in bulk.
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Definitely the latter. Fiberglass batt insulation is cheap but it’s horrible to work with, especially if you get a short fiber stuck in the inside of your eyelid, where it will put a slice in your eyeball every time you blink.
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So do you still have the ballista?
When I built the boys bunkhouse, I paid quite a lot extra to use that new-fangled recycled denim insulation they have now. It was worth it to be able to work in shorts and not be scratch-scratch-scratching for a week. The only bad thing about it is that you can’t cut it with a razor knife, but they sell a cute little saw that does the job.
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Hey, that stuff looks great! How much did it cost, relative to fiberglass? I ask because I’ve discovered that the fiberglass insulation in my attic is all installed upside-down (despite the clear labeling that says not to do that), and if I’m gonna get up there and flip it all over anyway (which is by no means a guaranteed event), I’d rather replace it with old jeans that look like they take up less space.
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It was about $30 for 24 linear feet vs. regular fiberglass which is about $18 for a 32 ft roll. So roughly twice as much, maybe a little more. Most Home Depots don’t stock it but can get it in a couple of days. They gave me the cute saw for free.
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@dave_b, I dunno. 
@RatMan, thanks for the info! I’ve been intrigued by that stuff but didn’t want to spend the $$ until I’d heard somebody say they were happy with it.
@Donald_Petersen, wait! Don’t flip it yet! Is it craft paper faced batts, do you have soffit or ridge venting, is there a vapor barrier under it, and which side exactly is up? Do you see any condensation or mildew/mold? Is the ceiling underneath drywall or something else? Attic insulation should be unfaced, really, with no particular side up…
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I dunno, I’ll have to look more closely. The building inspector noted that it was installed upside-down right before we moved in, and the one piece I checked did indeed say “This Side Up” on the side that wasn’t up.
I’m in no rush to fix it. It’s hotter than fuck up there these days.
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Lots of folks have been very successful breaking the rules, so I wouldn’t mess with it in the absence of a problem. Especially not when it’s deadly hot… you’re in Cali, right? It’s probably 180°F up there!
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It was 102° down below today, out on the front porch, so yeah… upstairs in the attic (effectively the third floor) was probably quite toasty.
The AC seems to be working well enough without overworking itself, so the insulation is probably fine as it is. Still, that fiberglass stuff does seem to be thick & nasty, making it difficult to move around up there (the big AC ducts don’t help either), and someday I want to change it to something less bulky.
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In new houses too, at least for cold air return – when we renovated, we got brand new ducting, and the cold air returns both use the void between the studs to direct the air closer to the furnace before switching over to regular metal ducts.
Depends on the local building code. Where I live I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for both returns and supplies, because fire can travel through either one, and that’s what the code’s concerned with.
There’s actually some other good reasons not to do it, though. So you don’t see it as much as you used too.
All that being said, my house has returns in the wall cavities, too. 
Consider cellulose while we’re talking about this, but I’m willing to bet a good day spent air sealing would take care of a lot of your issues as well.
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Question: after the drilling is done, what’s the best way to re-sharpen the bits?
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