This summer, I made a new friend: double reflective foil insulation. If you haven’t heard of it or used it before, double reflective foil insulation is a durable and lightweight foldable insulation product. According to the website of a popular brand, it is made of “two 96% reflective layers of film bonded to two internal layers of heavy gauge polyethylene bubbles (total thickness 5/16”).” So, it’s essentially a lightweight yet durable bubble wrap with the unique ability to reflect virtually all heat and light back to its source.
I hope that you will enjoy this journey into how I have found many applications and benefits of foil insulation (I’ll call it this from now on for sake of brevity) that help me feel more prepared. Whether I’m battling the crushing heat waves of this past summer or contemplating being on the run in SHTF, foil insulation has shown me it has something for every situation. Let’s start at the beginning of the story: IN THE HEAT of the moment!
Off-Grid AC
With the craaaaazy hot temperatures we’ve been having here in the north this summer, I thought I was going to melt from the heat when the temperature in my cabin was approaching 90 degrees! As it is designed for solar gain in our cold winters with large south-facing windows, this has been my cabin’s weakness. However, this weakness didn’t truly show until these record-breaking heat waves.
So, I realized that I had to stop the solar gain through the windows. Sure, I could have spent thousands on custom shutters. Ha ha! Maybe next year! Y’all know me well enough to know that I’m on a budget. I thought back to a small roll of material that had been a gift from a beekeeper friend of mine. I had a roll of foil insulation in the attic somewhere. Maybe I could make something from that?
Although that piece was too small for my large windows, it got the idea percolating. I went to our local hardware store and bought a large roll. I would do a trial….surely it could help. By combining the piece I already had, I made a giant solar shield that would cover the two south-facing windows that are the main culprits of my hot, hot solar gain.
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How to attach, however, became the pressing question! I decided that I could hold the solar shield to the steel siding with magnets. Hmmmm. Spoiler alert…that didn’t work, especially in the wind. In the end, I cut the large shield into two smaller ones that fit over each window. By putting one or two spring-loaded bars into my deep window openings….voila! I had the windows covered from the inside.
The results were nothing less than astonishing! I went and bought a second large roll to cover the west-facing sliding glass door. If I kept the shield on during the heat of the day, the house was so cool that I could almost do without AC on even the hottest days, limiting my use of the unit to a few strategic hours.
I was sold! I looked into other applications on the product website and soon saw that foil insulation can be a prepper’s best friend.
Survival on the Run
I have now integrated foil insulation into my BOB. How better to keep warm than with some foil insulation that can be used as a sleeping pad and/or wrapped around me as a sleeping bag in a pinch.
If sleeping in a small tent on the run, a pad of foil insulation can be used under the tent as a comfort pad and moisture barrier. It would also provide protection from the cold of the ground through the night. When it’s safe to do so, you could use the foil insulation as a light reflector in the evening to write in your post-apocalyptic diary. Just don’t set the candle too close to the foil insulation!
Now, I know some of you are already thinking: “Ya, like I really want to be walking around with a giant reflective roll, aka target, on my back, screaming ‘Here I am!’” Yes, you are quite right. If you’re moving at night, or during the day, roll the foil insulation inside your camo tarp and attach it to the back of your pack. Done! And sure, I’ve got a MIL-SPEC mylar safety blanket in my BOB, too. However, in terms of sturdiness, I like my foil insulation for the ideas mentioned above.
Other Home Applications
Now, back to reality and today’s day-to-day life. I have a few extra pieces of foil insulation around now, and I have thought of lots of extra uses for them. We’re having a party next week, and the sun may still be hot. I will bring a sheet of foil insulation to attach to our shade tent to protect our delicious desserts from melting in the sun.
If you want to bring that casserole to your Aunt’s potluck, but have a long drive ahead of you, just wrap the casserole dish in a towel and then fold a piece of foil insulation around it. If you enjoy camping and want to extend the effectiveness of your coolers, consider making a cooler cover out of foil insulation. Make those ice blocks earn their keep!
When starting seedlings, some varieties require a warmer temperature. You can use sheets of foil insulation and simple shelving to create a closed-in shelter that increases the temperature and light available to the seedlings.
In the heat of the summer, do you really want to be cooking indoors? Why not use a solar cooker instead? According to Eco-Home Genius, foil insulation is one of the best forms of insulation for that DIY solar cooker you’ve always wanted to make.
On the Farm
Yes, there are plenty of agricultural applications of this wonderful stuff, too! It gets c-c-c-c-old in these parts. When I used to work off the homestead milking cows, equipment freezing in the parlour was often a concern in the dead of winter. Wrapping foil insulation around the stations closest to the source of the cold air prevented most freezing and saved us time in the wee hours of the morning.
Remember that friend of mine who was a beekeeper? She gave me a bag of her extra foil insulation cuttings one year. We used it on the farm in the milking parlour. She had some because she makes beehive wraps out of it and sells them. It helps keep the heat in the hive in the winter, where you want it.
According to product information, foil insulation is also great for insulating chicken coops. Now, let us know if you’ve ever tried that! I would worry that the chickens might peck the heck out of it. The product label does mention that sometimes you need to cover it to protect it from animals, such as when using it for pet houses.
Reflective Foil: A Hot Topic!
Until I experienced it myself, I couldn’t believe how powerful a reflector and insulator this stuff is. Do you have any double reflective foil insulation around your home or in your own BOB or do you prefer Mylar foil? Do you have another possible preparedness or home application you can share with us for foil insulation? Please tell us in the comments section.
About Rowan
Rowan O’Malley is a fourth-generation Irish American who loves all things green: plants (especially shamrocks), trees, herbs, and weeds! She challenges herself daily to live her best life and to be as fit, healthy, and prepared as possible.
11 Responses
I have added this to coolers, and even into the toes of a slightly oversized pair of boots. Great stuff that I will have to revisit soon!
I love technical articles. It is until recently that people in tropical countries has started to understand how important isolating materials are when building. I’ve been in steel sheet roofed hutches at noon and they’re a torture.
Thanks so much, Jose. With your advanced skills, I thought you might enjoy this pro level guide to this produce: https://cdn.reflectixinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/F2-%E2%80%93-Solutions-for-the-Pro-Revised-012024.pdf
I have read many articles suggesting that foil panels can block unwanted 4G and 5G rays from the same towers. There has been a lot of concern about the health of those rays, especially with many reports of unexplained weakness or illness for people living close to those towers, and illnesses first-time arriving shortly after the towers became operational. Many towers were installed early into lock-down pandemic (even before the shots) that has led many people to distrust government. Some authors suggest that too many electronic devices close to one’s sleeping area (phones, routers, computers, game and music stuff can send out “rays” interfering with the bio-electrical pathways in the human body, while people are sleeping (EMF -electromagnetic frequency overload). Most people do not know that every cell in the body has an electromagnetic field around it, with sort of a satellite arrangement (except it is 360 degrees around the cell) of layers of positive and negative charge ions. At times cells need a negative charge boost (such as blood cells, since negative charge electrons repel things; and positive charge cations attract things. So cells can change their electro-chemical polarity to attract what they need and repel what they don’t want or need. If blood electrochemical charges are attracting blood components then blood clumping could (would likely) occur, and that can lead to health/life threatening blood clots. Healthy blood is not supposed to clump, except (in lay language) at wounds to close the wound so that someone does not bleed out continually. Anything that can change or put into duress the healthy functioning of cells is NOT GOOD and can cause discomfort and disease if it persists long enough. And when its cause is outside of a house, aluminum foil based coverings can help reduce the load (such as walls facing cell towers; and maybe every interior wall around a baby’s sleeping room (provided “aluminum foil” is not degrated and disintegrating). But hopefully the foil will not degrade, because aluminum dusts that get airborn are also not healthy. Ever since Aluminum was put into kid’s shots, the autism rate has persistently grown (with the ever increasing kids shots from baby years onward). Before aluminum was put into shots the autistic rate was about 1-1.5 per 1,000 babies. Now the autism rate is 1 in every 30 babies. Still aluminum will block electromagnetic frequency waves at power-ratios far above what healthy baby’s and people’s bodies operate with. This EMF problem is far more complicated than what I have shared; and parents would do well to examine the shots they approve for their babies. A good resource for detailed information are any articles by A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR (AMD) who writes lengthy explanatory articles on his Substack Server website called THE FORGOTTEN SIDE OF MEDICINE. Check out: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/06/14/what-makes-vaccines-so-dangerous.aspx? [Here Dr. Mercola publishes a full article from Dr. AMD]. The read is free; but you must be a paid subscriber to read what-is-usually-100s of comments.
Another important article for consideration is AMD’s article that Pharmaceutical Shots are THE CAUSE of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). While many may think “the verdict is out”, can we be sure. Baby development is not the same as adult 0ngoing development and aging. You can be a free subscriber to A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR and read every article he has ever written for free. Only the 100s to 1,000s of comments (such his article with Dr. Pierre Kory about whether Pfizer and Moderna vaccinated people SHED their shots onto others, had over 1,000 comments).
Really good points about EMF radiation protection. There are EMF paints that you can apply under a colored decorative paint, there are EMF fabrics that you can put over windows to allow light in, or to make bed netting. I am unsure about the “EMF” pendants, but some look pretty cheap, so I wonder if they are actually effective.
We built a homestead cottage i Zone 3. We also designed our cottage for solar gain. A significant number of our windows, including one that is large and just below the roof peak. We get many subzero nights, sometimes down in the double digits below zero and we absolutely noticed the heat loss from those windows! We also bought a big roll of double-faced mylar faced insulation. The first use was for our chicken coop, which has foam board on the underside of the roof. We also decided to layer the north and south sides with the foil insulation, and covered that layer with cardboard to keep the girls from pecking the foil. Every couple of years they start looking too beat up, and we set aside cardboard of the right size to cover the doors and walls up to about 4 feet high. We made frames covered with the insulation to fit into the insides of our south-facing windows. Over the course of our first winter in the cottage, we also decided to cover the open shelf used for storing potatoes and eggs with a length of foil insulation to stabilize the cooler air along that north wall. We use big metal clips to attach it to cover the open face and partway along the sides of the shelf. We have been doing this for 11 years, and the foil has held up quite well despite repeated clipping and unclipping. Our wood stove is about 6 feet south of the north wall and the food storage shelf.. Even in the coldest nights when the stove is burning hard late into the night, the shelf to the north of it keeps a steady 65F. We have a well, but no plumbing and on winter bath nights we set up our “bathtub” ( a big, rubber feed tub) in front of the wood stove. We keep a length of the foil insulation to wrap 2/3 around the the tub for a no draft, cozy bath by the fire.
Reflectix saved my bacon last winter! I had joined a couple of full time rv living groups, and it was recommended to put in all closets/cabinets on the outside walls. I also put some underneath my matress. And of course, windows. Cut right, you can take it out of the windows when you want the light. I also use it to cover skylights and vents. I am moving back to bricks and sticks this fall, but I will certainly be using it there as well!
Hi, interesting and encouraging options for the reflective foil! I’m currently building a small off-grid cabin, and although I borrowed the idea from some you tubers, I’ve covered the bottom joists in my crawl space with foil strips. I’m sure the R factor isn’t that great but it will help, and block and drafty wind. I’m in the process of underpinning the crawl space, so the reflective foil is going up Noe, then the metal underpinning over top, trimmed with treated wood and caulking. Voila’! Should keep out most of the cold air and hopefully any little mammals.
This stuff is amazing and so easy to work with. I live the idea of using it in a BOB.
Excuse the typing boo boos. Not sure how to edit my comment. Thanks auto spell…. you are doing a terrible job. 🤣
Be careful when using this foil on windows! Ideally, the foil should be placed on the OUTSIDE of the window. This sounds counterintuitive, as it exposes the foil to the weather. Trouble is, when you place it on the inside of the window, the light, including infrared, has already passed through the glass. The heat it brings with it has nowhere to go. It’s trapped between the foil and the glass; classic “greenhouse effect.” If the temps get high enough in that space, as they will routinely do in a desert area such as mine, it can cause the glass to literally EXPLODE. I was actually in a room and bore witness to this where I work. It sounded like a BOMB GOING OFF! The double-pane window was completely GONE. I’m unsure of the “science” that caused the failure, whether it was the heat’s effect on the glass itself, or whether the heat caused the glass to expand, and it had nowhere to go because it was confined to the frame. All I know is that it HAPPENED. Putting the foil on the outside of the window stops the light before it goes through the glass and reflects it back, so nothing really gets trapped between it and the foil and the glass. ‘Just putting this out there as a cautionary tale…
Hi Tom,
Yes, you are quite right to draw attention to this danger! As I described in my article, I put my solar shields on the OUTSIDE of my windows for that reason. The product info contains many warnings about this. There are very limited circumstances in which the foil can be inside. It pays to read the directions, especially in this case. Thanks for sharing that, Tom.