TL;DR
Continuous insulation is an uninterrupted layer of rigid foam or mineral wool installed across the entire face of a wall or roof, outside the framing, so studs and joists cannot short-circuit the thermal envelope. Wood framing conducts heat roughly four times better than the insulation between studs, costing a nominal R-19 wall several effective R-points; an inch or two of exterior board recovers them.
What it means
Continuous insulation is an uninterrupted layer of rigid foam or mineral wool installed across the entire face of a wall or roof, outside the framing, so studs and joists cannot short-circuit the thermal envelope. Wood framing conducts heat roughly four times better than the insulation between studs, costing a nominal R-19 wall several effective R-points; an inch or two of exterior board recovers them. The IECC mandates it in colder climate zones, written in formulas like R-20+5ci, and it appears in siding bids as foam sheathing under the new cladding.
Where it sits in the glossary
Continuous insulation is part of the Trade jargon group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
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