Question

freerangemonkey's avatar

What is the r-value of HDPE (high density polyethylene)?

Asked by freerangemonkey (298 points) | asked April 28th, 2008 | 7 responses | “Great Question” (0 points) | Flag as…
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Answers

PupnTaco's avatar

Great question for Google.

bulbatron9's avatar

Look on the packaging, or like Pup said Google it!

freerangemonkey's avatar

@PupnTaco: I am amused that you took more time to answer this with a googleit than to actually heed your own advice. Had you tried it yourself you would have found that there is not a readily available, obviously correct answer in the front page results for google. I know. I did try googling it. I got 4 different answers based on four different, not-entirely-apples-to-apples results, leaving me more confused than before.

I also tried: wikipedia, several engineering and chemistry related sites and my own library of engineering and building materials texts. How do you like them apples?

None of the sources I tried had a definitive answer. Trust me, if I post a question on fluther its because I want a fast answer…not to wait a day to get any answer. Obviously I tried googling it first.

If snarky, Ill-informed responses are going to become the norm here, I fear for the future of fluther as anything better than yahoo answers.
by the way… I eventually did track down what I think is the correct answer. I had to call a wholesale plastic supplier. He said he didn’t know the r-value, but gave me the thermal conductivity, k-value. A quick division into one for the inverse… 4.4/inch.

justeffinggoogleyourself.com

mvgolden's avatar

@freerangemonkey. R 4.4/in sounds high considering 3in fiberglass batt is R11 and 6in fiberglass batt is R30. Just my gut feeling.

freerangemonkey's avatar

It seemed high to me too. When you put it in those terms, it seems way out of whack. Especially considering it’s dense (thus the name!) so there is little air to act as a thermal break…

Back to the drawing board!

mvgolden's avatar

Have you looked at efunda

It’s got lots of great engineering data.

PupnTaco's avatar

I meant no offense; it seemed like an esoteric, technical question not many on Fluther would know. I assumed Google would have a quick answer – obviously I was wrong.

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