Vacuum insulated panel (VIP)

Factory-sealed rigid panel with a fumed-silica or open-cell foam core evacuated below 1 mbar, faced with a gas-barrier film. Center-of-panel thermal conductivity is roughly 4 mW/(m*K) new, about 8-10x better than EPS or mineral wool (~35-40 mW/(m*K)) for the same thickness, degrading to roughly 7-8 mW/(m*K) over 25 years as the vacuum slowly leaks down. A puncture is a real failure mode: conductivity jumps to around 22 mW/(m*K) at the puncture site, and panels can't be cut, drilled, or trimmed on site. They're ordered to exact factory dimensions and simply discarded if damaged. The least field-repairable and least adaptable insulation material in this catalog, despite needing no power to function.

Cost
High
Upkeep
None
Skill to build
Specialist
Lifespan
15-25 years design life before degradation and puncture risk make it a discard-on-damage material, per its own description; cannot be repaired once compromised
Embodied carbon
Medium
Space / material use
Low
Output timing
None
Skill to repair
Specialist
Regulation (FR example)
New construction falls under RE2020, which sets thermal and carbon performance thresholds for the building as a whole rather than approving individual materials.

Note: Cost, carbon and footprint are rated against the other options for this same need, not in absolute terms.

Inputs

none

Outputs

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Sources

What this page does not tell you

No sizing or quantities: how much a technique yields, and how much a household needs, both depend on the build and the people, so the catalogue compares options rather than dimensioning them. It carries no bill of materials and no build sequence, and it is written for an oceanic, clay-soil climate (Normandy, France). Regulatory notes are indicative and need confirming locally.