> The reason is that insulation is actually a > medium to isolate dead air, which is the actual insulator (air is a > poor conducter of heat.) Therefore, given other factors, more > effective insulation requires a thicker wall. You may, however, want > to consider adding a vapor barrier if none presently exists. This > would hedge against future problems. Most "dead air"-based insulation have an R-value of 3.5-4 per inch. However, you can enclose other gases than air, and achieve roughly twice as good insulation value per inch. Two examples are isocyanate and expanded polystyrene. These also work as vapor barriers. Main difficulty would be to fit them securely inside the body cavities, since they are (semi) rigid boards. Note however that improvement is limited by the ratio of glass area to insulated area in the Vanagon, unless you start covering also the glass. Single pane glass is approx R=1. Heat "resistance" in parallel circuits calculates just like in electrical circuits. /Martin -- Martin Jagersand email: jag@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department jag@cs.chalmers.se University of Rochester Slow down and visit the VW diesel Westy page: WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/vw ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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