I am a bit obsessed with developing easy, low-tech, homestead-scale
mushroom cultivation techniques that also yield beautiful, healthy, and high-performing insulative mycelium material for thermal and acoustical insulation. This framework yields building materials as a value-added byproduct of the production of culinary and
medicinal mushrooms. It has kept me awake at night for the last decade. So I began tinkering and sharing some of my findings here and elsewhere, and I've found myself occupying an interesting in-between space.
Mushroom farmers find my methods unsatisfactory, because I voluntarily confine myself to the use of infinitely reusable materials, and they feel this causes production to take a hit, affecting their bottom line.
Insulation manufacturers, industrial designers, and manufacturers find my method of manufacturing far too slow because, while it takes me weeks to grow an insulation panel, the process of manufacturing for fiberglass and mineral wool takes a mere fraction of the time.
What both of these schools of thought fail to see is the potential for intersectionality. This is the place where permaculturists tend to have vision where many conventional practitioners have blind spots.
Mushroom farmers are already waiting weeks for their substrate to be colonized with mycelium to yield their product, the mushroom fruiting body. Then the consumed substrate will be, at best, composted as no value, accelerating its atmospheric
carbon deposit, and at worst, the whole block of substrate and single-use plastic destined for the landfill. So why not make a few slight modifications to the process that will yield beautiful, high-performing thermal and acoustical insulation as a value-added byproduct? Furthermore, there is a possibility of incorporating conductivity into the mycelium, adding a biologically grown Faraday-cage building envelope to the list of advantages:
https://permies.com/p/1047318/Mycelium-Grounding
Several years ago, I started cold-calling mushroom cultivation operations and research facilities to see if they'd be interested in partnering with me in this endeavor. Most of them never responded. A few of them took the time to courteously decline.
After being turned down by dozens of folks (including the wonderful
Paul Stamets, Ecovative Design, and Gryphon Doors) I had a chat with Paul Wheaton up at his place. It seems my idea was aligned with his particular brand of wacky. This conversation ensued:
https://permies.com/s/mycelium-insulation-podcast.
Later, Paul sent me an email and said "hey, why don't you come out to my place and show us how to do this mycelium insulation thing." So I did! I began documenting the process here:
https://permies.com/t/177485/Homegrown-Mushroom-Mycelium-Insulation-Panels Soon, we hope you'll be able to watch how the rest of the story unfolds in the movie we're making about all the projects from that event, including my Mycelium Core Door:
https://permies.com/t/181810/permaculture-projects/Mycelium-Core-Door.
I think that, we will also be able to draw up plans so that people will be able to replicate and improve on my easy mushroom cultivation method.
Do you want to see more of this kind of thing? Maybe a whole house? Maybe document how it does over the
course of a decade?
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