Has anyone used Aircrete as an insulator?

Basically it wouldn’t be affected by moisture or rot? Like on the outside of the dirtbag home, a layer of Aircrete? Would this prevent the bags from breathing? What if you made Aircrete, then ground it up into small poreous rocks like lava rock?

Aircrete (from my research) appears to be pretty good for insulation. However, the 'fluffier' (more insulative)you make it, the more fragile it is. The cement can absorb some water as well. If it has to be mechanically strong as well, to contain the soil, or other Mass, it may not do very well.

And you can only pour about a foot to a foot and a half deep at one time. Over that depth the weight of the uncured aircrete has a habit of causing the cavitated bubbles to break down. Many of the people doing aircrete domes make blocks of aircrete that are then mortared together after curing to form the domes. I think this is how DomeGaia does it?

My guess is that Airecrete would work for insulating a dirt thermal Mass, but you might also consider papercrete or styro aircrete or dustcrete (sawdust). Both have good insulating properties as well.  According to one video, papercrete is mechanically very strong as well. Dustcrete is also reported to be strong and insulative.

The above mentioned variations all have some similarities to aircrete. Aircrete is air captured inside the cement in the form of micro bubbles.  Tiny convection chambers, heat has to convect to the other side or 'soak' around the border of each bubble.
Think of the inclusions as  a 'thermal void' aggregate
(Or at least voids of slower thermal transfer)

All of those tiny little 'empty' spaces slows down the transfer of thermal energy. Styro aircrete uses the micro air bubbles as well as larger thermal voids formed by the styrofoam beads. Paper and Dust have the cellulose (wood) fibers giving both structural strength as well as low thermal conductivity.
I think chunking up aircrete to use as aggregate would also work, but I don't know how crumbly it would be or if that would cause any problems in a stronger cement mix.

I guess one of the variables will also be what's available to you as well as costs.

I am answering this on my phone, but I've got some links I would like to add. It will be easier to add those on the computer. If I can I will add them to this message but I may have to add them as a separate reply.

One of the links is to a video of this gentleman's styro aircrete testing. He's changed the name of his channel to Abundance Building Concepts. He's got some great information. And I like his styro Shredder design. A couple of the other ones I might have actually gotten to off of other posts here on permies. I can't remember at the moment: it's that whole 'click a link then follow another link' thing. The guy who is doing the sawdust showed a clip of a dozer dumping sawdust into the back of a pickup truck and I think $20 was mentioned. Cheap if there's a sawmill nearby, possibly even free if you ask the right people.

I wonder if that would work with wood chips from a tree service? They wouldn't be aged or dry and there could possibly be leaves mixed in, but that might not be a problem? A lot larger and more irregular in shape than something like Styrofoam or sawdust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U4JAop0dTY
https://youtu.be/pBX1MJsJ0tY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RiWlwO5irE&t=39s
https://youtu.be/XyirHL9TvGE
https://youtu.be/4TPFgJC1xx8

I just found this.  My Little Homestead has done a bunch of earthbag and some other stuff, I was not aware that they did some aircrete, too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKyPVV-daqk

Nancy's post is great, she shares lots of alternatives.
Let me suggest paperadobe/fidobe as a filling for your earth bags.
Because it uses paper and mud, it can be cheap and have low embodied energy.
Along the same lines, mixing styrofoam with mud could make a insulative earth bag filling.
Light clay straw functions similarly, but I find straw to be difficult to source at prices I want to pay, because I'm cheap, and prefer to nothing!

One more suggestion.
Charcoal.
I have better things to do with the charcoal I make, but it could be perfect for stuffing into earth bags.

I'm going to sound silly here, I wasn't really tracking that this was in the earth bag section and that you're building with earthbags.

So would your thermal Mass be contained inside an earthbag wall?

Aircrete or any of the other variations of insulative materials that were mentioned above in both mine and Will's replies could certainly be used as an insulative filler between structural walls.

If this is above ground, and it will stay dry, like the plastic protected layers in a Wofati. There might be some additional natural options as well. I don't think that I would have stawbales below grade.

Don’t do it! It sucks. I spent so much time and money and it is really difficult and the aircrete just crumbled off I spent  all that time, product, and money and it was wasted. The foam generator is really expensive and making your own is difficult. I saw someone who made one on YouTube with a Harbor Freight paint sprayer. I replicated it, but it didn’t work very well. I made my own with a battery powered water pump that pumped foam water into a two way valve. On the other side of the valve, I had air from the compressor. Those both shot out into a hose that was connected to PVC pipe contraption that was used as a mixing chamber.  I put steel wool in mixing chamber and then when I pressed the air… the foam would come out. It worked really well. Except the aircrete didnt like to stay on the bags. It just crumbled off. It is very brittle. I even tried to mix in some fiberglass resin… it was better but still not good.  I don’t know what I did wrong but I spent the entire summer trying to figure it out and I never did. Oh and you need a high powered compressor. I got one from harbor freight but it wasn’t cheap. So… a maybe you will have better luck if you try.

Hi Paityn,

Welcome to Permies.  And thanks for sharing your experiences.

Thank you all for your posts! My alerts got hurried in my email and I’ll be taking a look! I’m so sad that in Alaska we have no lava rock mines even though we have so many volcanoes. No way to publicly access companies that mine it if they do. I’m thinking maybe I could drive a load up, or maybe I could make an air Crete/styrocrete exterior.