Rockwood installation / gaps & compression – GreenBuildingAdvisor

Hi!  This is the first time we’ve done Rockwool ourselves and we are type A(AAA) personalities so we tend to want everything perfect, which is not great when building a house.  We’re trying for a pretty good house, but working with a conventional builder.  Our wall assembly is exterior 2×6 w/2″ zip-R attached to the front of the studs on the inside w/spray foam picture framing (done — see image) then will be insulation, Intello and then a 2×4 wall + more Rockwool + drywall.

We had pretty much decided we wanted to use Rockwool batting (for 2×8 walls, so they would be a little shy of the front in any case), but then read about gaps and ~20% performance loss due to convection in voids, and then we test fit a few pieces, and they are going in .. not great.

Is this a learning curve issue, or an inherent issue with batting which is why so many people like dense pack in the walls, or is this no problem and we are being overly picky?  I’ve looked at the instructions and watched videos and it seems like people generally just cram it in there and keep going.

Thanks as always for your valuable guidance.  It’s not entirely too late for us to switch to dense pack for behind the Intello, but we’ll need to move quickly as winter is coming.