High-performance building envelopes are designed and constructed to be particularly well adept at acting as an environmental separator, keeping the influence of outdoor elements from infiltrating and impacting the encapsulated indoor environment. A well-designed enclosure must not only insulate, but must control moisture, air temperature and vapor. Because of the number of variables that an envelope must address, more often than not they have been designed as complex layered structures, with numerous products combined to comprise the total system.
Continuous insulation is one such layer, which is installed on the outside of the structure. The structure’s total thermal performance is optimized when this outer insulation layer is augmented with additional insulation installed in the stud cavity. In this manner, the insulation solution is likened to a coat (outer continuous insulation layer) and a sweater (insulation in stud cavity) working together.