Spray Foam Insulation

Anyone ever done this? How's it work out?

https://www.retrofoam.com/

I'm pretty sure the house I bought in TX was built before they found out about "insulation" here. Probably spent $1000 running the furnace during last week's four-day 30*F Snowpocalypse. Literally anytime the furnace wasn't actively running, there was a literal cold wind - not draft, wind - through the house. My wife actually yelled at me to sit down, put on a blanket, and stop looking for the open window.

 

We had ours done when wer renovated. In your case, trying to locate and seal the leaks would be a major improvement.

How old is your house?

 

And you wasted all that time worrying about a damn snake in the shitter…

 

Something like this can help track down leaks when temp differences are significant. https://www.flir.com/products/flir-one-edge-pro/

Depending on what your exterior cladding is and what condition it's in it may be more effective to remove it, add house wrap, and 2" of foam board on top of that. Rain screen on top of foam board which also provides an additional air gap layer and then reinstall cladding. If your attic is unvented and accessible you can spray foam the underside of the roof for additional benefit. Simply dumping foam into the wall cavities won't necessarily address moisture/vapor issues.

 

The only downfall I see with these type of applications is if you ever wanted or needed to run a new wire the the wall cavity...

 

Maybe borrow or rent a FLIR type camera to see which walls are leaking. Could be the winders... especially if a finless retro fit

 

More insulation is a good thing, but short term they sell heat shrinking film that you could put on the inside of your windows that would eliminate some of the draft. Also check your outlet boxes. They can be a bit of a short circuit in existing insulation/ vapor barriers.

 

My bill was $630 last month, I'll be following this thread for advice. Hopefully it was just an anomaly caused by the freak cold, but it still concerns me.

 

We had it put in our previous house that was built in 1909 with no insulation. Heating costs went WAY down, drafts went down, and we were amazed at how much quieter the house was. As they were pumping it in I could hear a decrease in background noise like when you put ear plugs in and they expand. The only down side was the salesman said they could go through the exterior, but when the crew showed up they wouldn't touch the exterior because it was asbestos shingles, so we ended up with a couple hundred 3.5" diameter holes in our plaster walls. They did patch them, but it still required touching up their mediocre patch job and paint. Even with that, I would definitely do it again.

Edit: Because it is mixed with water before being pumped in, I have heard of issues with installation behind drywall due to the moisture.

 

The foam he linked dries to a texture more like grains of material that stick together. A fish tape would go right through it, and you can pull wires through.

 

Insulation isn't going to help unless you fix the leaks. Go to HD and rent a thermal camera. Think it was $70 - 3 days last time I did it for a house inspection. Just do it on a day where there's a decent temp difference between inside and outside or you're wasting time.

My house has no insulation in the outer walls, but I'm not nearly in that bad shape either. Hoping they can inject the compressed fibers in instead of spray foam. Either way, going to finish the house rewire before I do any insulation work.

 

Oh c’mon man…

 

Have watched a few not so positive reviews on the tubes that say one major down side is if you ever have a leak in the roof or wall or somewhere, because of the closed cell foam, you wont know about the leak until it has done a lot of damaged and spread. You will then have to rip a lot of foam out to find the leak whereas with fiberglass batting, its far easier to remove and see where the issue is.

and additional $0.02

As I just discovered mold on the underside of my roof in the attic, I have been trying to figure out my problem with ventilation. One mold abatement person told me this was never an issue with older homes because of the drafts and lack of insulting allowing lots of air-movement never allowing mold to form. He says he sees the rate of mold in new homes, green homes far more because they are so tightly sealed up, the moisture has no where to go and doesn't dry out causing mold to easily form.

 

You aren't wrong...

 

Oh great..now he is going to be insufferable for the next 3 months.

 

meh... I see alot of new homes with blower door tests well under a 1 air change per hour.
The building code folks looked like morons stating a range... easily fixed with a fresh air duct and humidistats in wet rooms.

Also roofing is a crazy trade... its amazing how terrible the people in it dont care... and they are getting $900/sq.

 

My house was built in 72. When we moved in, it was like sitting outside in the house. Cold and you could hear the squirrels.

We replaced the windows early. That helped.

Once we were divorced and her name was off the paperwork to the house, I had foam insulation done on the outside walls, a pellet stove insert in the fireplace and new insulated garage doors done.

My heating oil vendor called and asked me if something was wrong at my house the first year. They were used to selling me $2500 or more in oil a year. That year all they got was $200.

If you have any walls that are not finished. Look at stone wool insulation. It’s absolutely fantastic.

 

I've got a steel construction building, 30x40 and had 1.5" closed cell foam insulation installed on the walls and ceiling. It's absolutely amazing.

I've needed to run wire and pipe and had to make some cutouts but simply used GreatFoam to fill back in and spray over, worked well.

Not sure the spray-in foam works as well but I was considering doing something like this for my garage. Wish I had used spray foam when I built the garage but... well, just did plain fiberglass mat and it sucks.

 

Like I’m gonna stop at three months.

 

I’m finishing up a repair project for a customer that had this exact problem. It’s a flat roof city rowhome with a membrane roof. The hacks that installed the roof years ago didn’t properly waterproof the deck posts where they went down into the roof framing. Years of water intrusion was held in by the spray in roof and wall insulation, thereby rotting out all of the roof sheathing, much of the wall sheathing, and several framing members. I had to tear everything out, re-frame, re-sheath, install a new roof, and inside drywall finishing. Big project.