[srinivasan]

The North Beach branch of the San Francisco Public Library actually uses denim as insulating material within their walls.

http://sfpublicworks.org/project/north-beach-branch-library

[jxramos]

"...and 11,350 square feet of insulation made from recycled denim, equating to approximately 4,500 pairs of jeans."

That's a lot of jeans!

[cjensen]

It's kinda important to build with less flamable materials whenever possible.

[Rodeoclash]

A library, by definition, is full of flammable materials anyway :)

[jxramos]

I remember this dude putting a bunch of materials to the test with a direct blowtorch flame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NC79e0oztM. I was hoping he had a demo of denim; it's mentioned in the video description, but skimming the video I couldn't locate it in a reasonable time. You can look at his demo on treated cellulose around 1:48

[daveguy]

Denim Batt at 12:39

https://youtu.be/8NC79e0oztM?t=12m39s

[jxramos]

bummer ><, I was hoping it would perform a lot better. The brief coverage of the poor performers explains why I couldn't skim it and land on it. Only the strong contenders had long enough coverage to skim with a mouse hover over the timeline and spot them in the thumbnail. Sounds like it was trading on low allergic response vs flammability according to his commentary.

[jrowley]

I imagine it was sprayed with a flame retardant?

[astura]

Fabrics used for insulation are treated with flame retardant.

[rrauenza]

People also insulate with cellulose -- ground up newspaper. It is treated with boron to make it flame retardant.