Jayco, Arctic Fox, Grand Design

Travelnutz a weary good write op. As a retired builder I can say that r values are often wrongly stated and the same product in a floor wall and ceiling often gives different results, and in which way it is used with other products not simply ad together, and only real test is hove much heat or cold transferred over a set time and temps.

dfm,

They use all materials used in the stackup including trapped dead air spaces.

The floor is the bottom cover, the bubble wrap if used and where they put it, a layer of fiberglas insulation, air space, the sub floor or actual wood floor thickness, the pad and carpet or flooring (linoleum etc), and add all up to make their claim. Some are true R-values given and some are NOT!

Same type component used addups for walls, roofs, front caps.

A good manufacturer will state the actual temps experienced in thermal chambers in each area of the RV when stabilized for many hours at 0F and 100F. It's expensive to do but that's the only way you'll know how effective the manufacturer's RV's insulation R-values really are and the heat uniformity distribution and A/C distribution is. After all, it's only you and yours who will be inside the RV you purchase in any weather/climate conditions you might be actually important and too late after the purchase to find out you were sold a ficticous bill of goods! Will be a very expensive lesson, won't it?

dfm,

What you described as personally seen surely should make you very skeptical as it was not being used/installed properly and where esle are they actually cutting true quality corners? It wouldn't have given me a warm and fuzzy feeling either and Northwoods should have known better than to do what you had wittnessed. Some RV manufacturers DO use/install the bubble wrap properly and per your posted info, Northwoods is not one of them! You wouldn't have even known their errored ways if you have seen the build process Northwoods actually uses and once installed and then covered up, it's hidden from view.

Good thing you seen it with your own eyes and now the brochure and manufacturer's lofty misleading claim's made are exposed as nearly meaningless. Any manufacturer can make many claims as they sound good and sway many unadvised perspective customers/buyers but what does that have to do with reality once you have purchased the RV. Darn little as it's too late and you only have what and how the RV was actually designed and built! Check out several manufacturers as there's striking differences to the educated human eye and commonsense in what's right and wrong or shady and not as manufacturer claimed.

""" 2 sided reflective bubble wraps are very to most effective when used in combination with a bulk insulation material such as spun fiberglass, shredded treated paper fibers, wood/wood fibers, carpet etc, a trapped dead air space on both sides of the radiant bubble wrap material, etc. Radiant bubble wraps add their very effective radiant thermal transference blocking properties to the bulk insulating materials/dead air space conductive insulating properties. Moisture blocking bubble wraps also are an extremely effective moisture barrier which is inherently lacking in bulk insulating materials other than tight fitting porifera closed cell foams. However, most foams lack reflective properties unless foil surfaced.""


SO, this statement being accurate ? ,The construction of an RV floor or Ceiling usually would not allow for dead air space.Especially when it is installed in a slaphazard fashion.
So I am at a loss to see how they can come up with their calculation of an equivalent R value of 29. I guess they take the most advantageous portion of any research statement and transpose it to their advertising material weather it is correct or not ! Truth in advertising !
Thank You for posting that. I guess we should forward this info to the RV manufacturers that tout their use of Astro foil along with proper installation information.

Perhaps this copy and paste etc will better explain the effectiveness of using a good quality 2 sided highly reflective "bubble wrap" in effectively insulating a structure/etc:

Insulation R-values (Thermal resistance effectiveness) explained:


"Thickness:

R-value should not be confused with the intrinsic property of thermal resistivity and its inverse, thermal conductivity. The SI unit of thermal resistivity is K*m/W. Thermal conductivity assumes that the heat transfer of the material is linearly related to its thickness.

The limitations of R-values in evaluating radiant barriers:

Unlike bulk insulators, radiant barriers resist conducted heat poorly. Materials such as reflective foil have a high thermal conductivity and would function poorly as a conductive insulator. Radiant barriers retard heat transfer by two means - by reflecting radiant energy away from its surface or by reducing the emission of radiation from its opposite side.
The question of how to quantify performance of other systems such as radiant barriers has resulted in controversy and confusion in the building industry with the use of R-values or 'equivalent R-values' for products which have entirely different systems of inhibiting heat transfer. The U.S. federal government's R-Value Rule establishes a legal definition for the R-value of a building material. The term 'equivalent R-value' has no legal definition and is therefore meaningless. R-values are mostly established for bulk insulation materials.

Calculating the performance of radiant barriers is more complex. With a good radiant barrier in place, most heat flow is by convection, which depends on many factors other than the radiant barrier itself. Although radiant barriers have high reflectivity (and low emissivity) over a range of electromagnetic spectra (including visible and UV light), their thermal advantages are mainly related to their emissivity in the infra-red range. Emissivity values are the appropriate metric for radiant barriers. Their effectiveness when employed to resist heat gain in limited applications is established, even though R-value does not adequately describe them."

The summary in an easy to understand explanation:

2 sided reflective bubble wraps are very to most effective when used in combination with a bulk insulation material such as spun fiberglass, shredded treated paper fibers, wood/wood fibers, carpet etc, a trapped dead air space on both sides of the radiant bubble wrap material, etc. Radiant bubble wraps add their very effective radiant thermal transference blocking properties to the bulk insulating materials/dead air space conductive insulating properties. Moisture blocking bubble wraps also are an extremely effective moisture barrier which is inherently lacking in bulk insulating materials other than tight fitting porifera closed cell foams. However, most foams lack reflective properties unless foil surfaced.

Two sided radiant bubble wraps basically reflect heat or cold away from one side and heat or cold away from the opposite side of the two sided radiant bubble wrap. In a heated structure when in cold ambient outside air, the inside radiant side reflects the inside heat energy back into the interior space. The outside radiant side reflects the outside cold air energy back away from the exterior radiant surface.

In the heat of summer/Sun's penetrating rays, the opposite occurs with reflecting interior cool energy back in and exterior heat energy back out.

When the exterior temperature and the interior temperature are approximately the same under cloudy skies, insulation in a structure basically serves only as a sound reducing medium.

Not much more to say other than the using of a good quality insulator material, thermal energy barrier materials, a good vapor barrier, and sealing the chambers properly to create dead air which prevents air circulation and/or air intrusions.

I used the wrong Terminology in Calling it Reflectix in my post. Outdoors RV say they use Astro foil on their website. ButI guess I still remain a skeptic when reading the claims of an R29 value. Especially, when I saw how it was installed on their assembly line at the floor level of the rv.

dfm,

First of all, Reflectix is a much cheaper to purchase knockoff and is not Astro Foil and does not have the same effective insulation properties. Secondly, having gaps or voids means it's not being installed properly which reduces the effectiveness.

Two R-7 layers of fiberglass insulation and one layer of Astro Foil in a 4-1/2 inch thick sealed chamber with 3/16" paneling on the inside and 3/8" plywood on the other for a ceiling/roof equals R-29. BIA certified! Takes more than 8" of the same fiberglass insulation in an 8+" sealed chamber with the same paneling and plywood the get the same R-29 value without having Astro Foil and you also lose the moisture barrier and reflective properties. That's what Astro Foil does for enhancing insulation effectiveness. That's with the Astro Foil laying horizontal and covering the entire chamber. Astro Foil mounted vertically has approx 2/3 the insulating effectiveness of laying horizontal.

As an average for a heated structure's heat loss, it's approx 50% thru the roof, 25% thru the floor, and 25% thru the sidewalls including having decent windows of average size. Heated air always rises and cold air always sinks! Best bang for the buck in insulation R-value is the ceiling/roof. How often doors to the outside are opened and for how long along with proper sealing and caulking of cracks and all air leaks has a huge affect on heat losses.

Basically, what insulates for heat losses also insulates for cooling losses with the exception of the Suns rays entering thru the windows which then heats inside objects.

We recently did a tour of the Northwood's plant that builds the Outdoor's Rv line of trailers in LaGrande,Oregon. While watching them assemble trailers on their production line I Saw them install the reflectix product which manufacturers tout as raising the R Value of the walls/floors to numbers in the R20's or higher.

Interestingly, when they laid a sheet of reflectix on the bottom of the subfloor there were huge gaps where It didn't come close to reaching the frame, so there were large gaps where there would be no reflectix. So to my observation there would be gaps with cold spots on the floors. I totally disbelieve the claims by manufacturers that 1/4 inch thick piece of Reflectix can increase the R Value in a trailer wall or floor to R 20 or more when comparing that to a stick built house with 2 x 6 walls filled with fibreglass batts !! I call BS !
I was impressed with the quality control exhibited at the end of the construction line though. Every defect in assembly was marked by their QC people and the person responsible for that part of the assembly had to make it right. Every trailer coming off the line was pressure tested.

Arctic Fox RV's are popular where they are made which is in the NW USA and you may note that the posts on about all the forums touting Arctic Fox and Northwood RV's are people mainly from the NW areas. Highly unpopular and seldom seen in the rest of the USA and Canada. Very few dealers in the rest of the country will handle them as those who do have reported them to be very slow sellers and not competitive in the marketplace with other like brands. Yes, we have talked to two dealers selling Arctic Fox in the eastern half of the USA and both have stated this. Mainly because their RV's and very outdated in designs, style, and interiors and higher priced than their competition in like models and do no better in hot or cold ambients as reported to their dealers by the few owners who had purchased them east of the Mississippi. Wild touting doesn't make any product any better than it really is and if they were better, they'd sell more but they don't and haven't!

Inventory costs money and stocking Artic Fox's is expensive and hard to sell in most of the country. Northwood has a couple dozen dealers while Jayco for instance has over 300 and they are all over the country. No driving hundreds or thousands of miles if you had a serious problem and Jayco gives a 2 full year hitch to rear bumper total waranty.

As for Jayco using Astro Foil bubble wrap along with fiberglass and foam for very effective insulation R-values, radiant reflective, and a very fine moisture barrier, the poster who made such an wrong claim about it not being excellent and very effective R-value needs to do some research and actually learn something. Astro Foil is the insulation that was developed specifically for NASA and is what's used in the NASA space shuttles and very high altitude military etc jets. It sure does keep the humans aboard from being cooked inside when the front side of the shuttle turns bright red from the air friction heat during re-entry and being frozen to death in the way below zero F (like -30F to -60F+) when flying at 40,000-100,000 ft up in the very bitter cold atmosphere. Guess the un-informed poster doesn't even have a clue as to what Astro Foil really is and what is does but NASA does! It's not the cheap knock off named Reflectix that some RV manufacturer's use!

Yes, the Jayco Pinnacle is a high level RV and is certainly a step above an Arctic Fox and that's a no brainer.

"Of the three, Jayco isn't really close."

Statements like this should not be made and are useless, unless you have owned all three brands and every level of Jayco. I have owned six different fifth wheels over the last 30 years all different brands and "levels or price points" such as Hitchhiker, Forest River, Newmar,and with the exception of two Jayco's. One of the Jayco's was a less expensive model and my current 5er is a Pinnacle, a higher level/cost unit. Each had its positives and negatives, for a given price point I believe Jayco's are very competitive. Yes I have been in Artic Foxes and they are nice but definitely not at another level even though many of their dealers and owners tout them as such. There are 5ers that have attributes that put them on a higher level but in my opinion, not the units you are comparing.