I know plenty of people that could swim in the stuff and not have it bug them in the least, then there’s people like me. If I have to touch the stuff I put gloves on and I still get it on my hands and arms.
The past few days I’ve been installing a furnace and duct work. That means crawling around in an attic filled with fiberglass insulation, dragging around fiberglass insulated flex ducts and making ducts out of fiberglass duct board. Of course I’m wearing jeans and boots and long sleeve sweatshirts which does a fairly good job, when i have to touch the stuff i try to remember to put on gloves but generally when I’m just shoving it out of the way I use my foot or a scrap piece of something or other to move it…and i still look like I have hives all over my arms. I assume it has to do with the fact that most people that do this for a living tend to do a lot more with their hands then I do and have much tougher skin then me.
Argh, I hate this stuff.
Simply reading your post has made my entire body a festering itch nest.
I hate the stuff.
Oh, and in one spot where I had to cut a hole for the plenum to go into the attic, I had to get through plywood, one inch Styrofoam and TWO layers or roll fiberglass insulation and then blown in insulation on top of that. It was a huge mess. I used the sawzall blade and some scrap wood to deal with the fiberglass and then my dad came around the corner and has no problem grabbing/tearing/pulling/ripping the stuff with his bare hands. Gah. The horror.
He’s the one who jokingly said “I could swim in the stuff”
Then there’s the duct board. It’s similar, but much denser, to drop down fiberglass ceiling panels. It’s comes as one big piece and you use special tools to cut it. These tools notch out sections about a half inch deep and about an inch wide. This allows you to fold it into a duct shape. My buddy is showing me how to use the tools. He runs the knife across the board and then peels out the section it cut. Then he would run his finger across the now open area a couple of times making sure he got all the little pieces out. I cringed watching him do this. Then cringed more when I realized I was going to have to do it. Luckily he left and left me along to do it so I grabbed a little piece off wood I found and used that instead. Worked fine and I didn’t have to look like an idiot in front of him.
It drives me nuts, both fiberglass insulation and the even worse compressed fiberglass ceiling tiles. I do a lot of audio-video work, and every time I have to work on a ceiling I spend the rest of the day itching until I can shower. Even then, I have to wash my body with baby shampoo.
I have to work in it all the time. It doesn’t make me itch but sometimes cause me to look like I have a rash on my face or arms. I have up trying to shield myself from the stuff. Running wires and doing junction boxes the gloves and respirators just make me have to sit in the crap longer.
Only advice I have is wash with cold water only after working in it. If you use warm water you’ll feel it for days.
Same here. That stuff is scary.
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A trick my dad taught me was using first dirt and then lightly damp mud and just scrub down with that out in the yard first. The dirt is the bigger help, I believe. It just sort of cleanses all of the little particles off.
Use a mask with that stuff! Not only is it bad for you, but there’s tons of dust and possibly rodent feces in the air. I installed 12" of fiberglass in the roof a few weeks ago, the mask was black afterwards. I was also extremely itchy, even with pants and a long sleeve shirt on.
I’ve never met a carpenter that didn’t hate the stuff.
I hate it. One of my worst experiences was crawling through blown in fiberglass insulation to run a phone line. It was like 90 degrees in the attic and it must have gone into all my pores. On the ride home I was sweating fiberglass and trying to drive without scratching. My back felt like it was resting on a miniature bed of nails.
It’s terrible. I’m a do-it-yourself guy, but not when it comes to fiberglass insulation.
depends on the brand and application. some brands are coarser than others and more irritating. loose material for blowing is a breathing hazard if you move a lot of it around. rigid forms are course and prone to slivers. depends on if you are thick skinned. short duration work is OK for me ungloved.
Just the sight of the pink fiberglass insulation makes me itch.
As an Electrician I have to deal with LOTS of it and I discovered a dry bar of soap could be your friend. You take the dry bar of soap and run in down your arms in the direction of your hair and it will pull the fiberglass out of your pores and off of the hair it is stuck to. The best part is that afterwards when you wash your hands using COLD water and the same bar of soap you just let it sit and dry for you to use again tomorrow after work.
Joe
I don’t know, I’ve never let myself get near the stuff. When I was little my uncle was building a new house, and I remember there were a bunch of us young cousins there playing around and we were very sternly told to stay away from the pink insulation. And by very sternly told, I mean the Parental Voice of God. So until I got to my teens I was so scared of it I thought merely touching it would get me in the hospital and if I spent a day around it being used I’d die.
Teach me to post on a thread like this - I just spent part of the day in a fiberglass filled attic. I’ve taken one shower so far and will need to take another. Even when you get the fiberglass off, the sharp ends of the fibers have produced a huge number of tiny cuts on the skin.
How could anybody swim in fiberglass insulation without it bothering them? I know the “swim” part is an exaggeration, but presumably we’re talking about touching it and/or rubbing against it, with bare skin. How can anybody do that without a negative reaction? As far as I know, it’s not like poison ivy or mosquito bites, where it’s allergic reaction to a chemical that causes the itchiness – it actually lodges little glass fibers all through your skin! How can anybody not be irritated and itchified by that?
I think some people just work with their hands more and have developed much tougher skin over the years so the glass physically doesn’t get in to their skin as much. And I’m guessing other people just aren’t bothered by it as much.
I’m the VP of a fiberglass company. You really do get used to it.
Um. Or you quit. 
I’ve got a bunch sitting on our patio from when the repairman unwrapped the old water heater and installed the new one.
I’m wishing he’d taken the insulation WITH him instead of leaving it out there, cause it’s been two weeks and I still haven’t got up the nerve to go stuff it into garbage bags. I won’t let the cats out there either, cause I can just imagine them getting it stuck in their paws, licking it off, and…yah. Talk about painful hairballs! Ugh.