Green Bear Spray Foam Insulation

There are very few instances in which Spray Foam Insulation is just not possible.

First, let’s clarify the biggest question we get from homeowners looking to add spray foam or another type of insulation. Can it be added in a finished wall without tearing down the drywall, paneling or other finished wall covering. YES, it can. Our “Pour in place” foam is injected into small openings in the face of the finished walls or through  openings made from the exterior of your home. We use a stud finder or thermal camera to locate the framing inside the walls, including the blocking which runs horizontally. Once we locate the studs we mark the pilot locations. We then drill a 1.5″ hole so we can insert the tube attached to the spray gun.

The pour-in-place spray foam stays liquified much longer and expands much slower than other types of spray foam (open and closed-cell) to ensure that it completely fills the wall cavity properly. This application method is safe in historical restoration projects and will not force pressure onto aged building materials so as to damage them. Once the wall cavity is filled a plug is inserted into the entry hole and patched. With a little bit of sanding, primer and paint the wall will look as good as new in no time. When paneling is involved many homeowners prefer to inject the foam from the outside so as not to have visible marks throughout the house. It takes little effort to patch holes in siding and match the paint.

I want to tear up a section of floor in my living room and have spray foam installed but there is not much room to do it from the crawlspace. This is actually an issue that we ran into recently. I gave a customer a proposal for adding 4″ of closed-cell foam under her living room and her bathroom. She was tearing up the bathroom floor and that was the only time she could have it insulated. It had absolutely NO insulation under there. What happened was we failed to notice that in the farthest area in the crawlspace under the living room there was barely enough room to even crawl through. The area that was visible upon the assessment was about three feet high but the area that was not visible was only big enough to shimmy through on our backs. In order to spray foam insulation properly and effectively the spray gun needs to remain about 18″ to 24″ away from the area being sprayed. In this case the gun was less than a foot away. We attempted to complete the job with spray foam but concluded that there were definitely some unreachable areas that she needed insulated so we decided that another type of insulation must be used. So as a company we decided that in order to effectively spray foam insulate we need at least 36″ of clearance.

So now I want to discuss how we handled the bathroom. Only the middle of the floor was being ripped up and replaced. Opening the floor was the only way to gain access in this part of the crawlspace which was only 24″ deep. Once we removed the middle of the floor we were able to add 4″ of soy-based closed-cell spray foam to the underside of the remaining parts of the floor. We then tacked a substrate in between the floor joists in the deepest part of the joists. Once the substrate was in place we then easily sprayed 4″ of foam onto the substrate and joining it to the foam that was on the underside of the remaining floor areas on each side creating an air tight seal. This portion of the floor is being replaced by another company and then new tile is going down so after a quick cleanup our job was done.

The used of a backing is also very common when adding spray foam in basement finishing projects. Because most finished basement walls are built an inch or more away from the foundation wall, we typically staple in a rigid backing material such as thermo-ply and then spray the desired amount on top of it.

I hope this post can help answer some of the common questions that homeowners and remodelers have when considering adding spray foam insulation. For more information about our products or to learn more about typical spray foam applications visit http://www.greenbearinnovations.com.

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