Styrofoam is designed from air bubbles that are trapped to prevent heat energy from escaping.
Can you use packing peanuts as insulation.
As far as being a fire hazard eps from which the peanuts are made can be and has been legally used in sheets for insulation as long as it s covered by a fire rated barrier such as drywall as bsee cm suggests above i would expect that if you were using peanuts in a wallspace that you would want to compress them as much as possible to maximise the extent to which they entrap air.
In the course of some framing it seems that there are spaces which get closed off and won t get insulated unless the gc does it on his own nickel during the framing process.
I m not sure when they switched to the new kind but it wasn t more than five years ago or so.
New packing peanuts are made from a type of corn starch.
If they get wet they ll dissolve and they re made to be highly biodegradable so they ll break down pretty quickly anyway.
Plastic peanuts hold air that helps cushion whatever is being shipped.
The r value of polystyrene is about 4 0 per inch.
Most packing peanuts are made of polystyrene.
In a wall cavity they would offer little resistance to air movement so they would be of limited r value.
By preventing heat loss packing peanuts make lovely insulators.
The very reason why plastic peanuts work well as packing makes them a bad choice for wall insulation.
Foam packing peanuts as insulation.
Osborn a former associate editor replies.