 Does it sound surreal to imagine a home with mushrooms growing inside the walls to keep it insulated? It is quite a reality. We all know that homes are more energy efficient when they have good insulation. Making use of a process that occurs all the time in the natural world is a new innovation in green building.
Fungi grow in conditions that are dark and moist. Being on the inside of walls makes this an ideal environment for them. Mushrooms are a sustainable form of insulation, which also acts as a firewall, and could even be grown into a whole house. The technique was invented at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and is planned to be commercialized under the label Greensulate by Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre. It may be put to use as soon as they are satisfied with their research and feel their technology is enough to meet demand.
The insulation is created by pouring a mixture of insulating particles, hydrogen peroxide, starch, and water into a panel mold. Mushroom spores are then injected into the mold, where they digest the starch producing a tightly meshed network of insulating particles and mycelium. The end result is an organic composite board which has phenomenal resistance to heat flow and can serve as a firewall.
Eben Bayers mushroom insulation invention shows promise as one fifth of the energy wasted in America today comes from poorly insulated homes. Traditional foam insulations we use are neither from a renewable source of energy as they are produced using petrochemical products, nor are they biodegradable. There are even more plans in store for Greensulate. Bayers and McIntyre plan to study modifying the growing mixture slightly to include reinforcing materials that could be used to create strong, sustainable growable homes. Examples of this application include cost effective structural panels that could be grown and assembled on site in developing nations where usable housing is scarce and generally hard to obtain or in disaster areas where temporary housing is essential.
As strange as it may seem to think that there are mushrooms farms inside the wall of our homes, it may be a great sustainable fix that we will see more of.
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