Benefits of Spray Foam Insulation

There is no better home insulating material that can seal your home from air and moisture intrusion, save on costly utility bills, strengthen your home, and protect your family’s health from dangerous mold, airborne pollutants, and allergens than Spray Foam insulation.

Benefits of Spray Foam Insulation

• Stops air and moisture infiltration
• Makes your home more comfortable
• Saves on energy costs
• Adds strength to the building structure
• It is permanent and will not sag
• Keeps dust and pollen out
• Reduces capacity requirements, maintenance and wear of HVAC equipment

Spray Foam Insulation Redefines Traditonal Construction Methods and Benefits Modern Building Sciences and Energy Efficient Green Building Initiatives
Read all about how spray foam used in the Building Envelope outperforms fiberglass insulation, becomes a superior air barrier, and defies traditional, and perhaps, outdated building practices of attic and crawl space ventilation.

SPF Saves You Money and Pays for Itself
SPF home insulation saves on energy costs and lowers utility bills. SPF is used to seal the entire “building envelope” of your home to prevent air and moisture infiltration. The US Department of Energy (DOE) studies show that 40% of your home’s energy is lost due to air infiltration. This air infiltrates the home in the form of drafts through walls sockets, windows and doorways.

Often times no expensive building wrap or additional vapor protection is required during construction when using SPF, saving money yet again.

High R-Value
Sprayed polyurethane foam has an aged R-value of approximately 6.0 per 1 inch thickness (depending on the particular formulation and application, higher values have been achieved), enabling it to provide more thermal resistance with less material than any other type of commercial insulation material. SPF systems are frequently used to insulate and protect a wide variety of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings.

Monthly energy and utility savings of 30% or greater can be achieved when compared to the alternative roofing and insulation systems. The cost of an SPF roof or insulation system can often be recovered in less than 5 years, simply through energy savings alone.

Prevents Air, Moisture and Gas Infiltration
Studies have shown that as much as 40% of a building’s total energy loss is due to air infiltration. Traditional fiberglass insulation is only stapled, or placed into the wall cavities and does not seal the stud and wall cavities from end to end, or top to bottom. Air infiltration can pass through these gaps, making it far less efficient than SPF. SPF not only adheres to, but forms to the walls and floors to create a tight seal and insulating barrier that stops this air leakage. SPF also boasts the highest R-value per inch than any other commercial material, (upwards of R-7.0, compared with Fiberglass at R-3.5) making your home more comfortable and less expensive to heat in the winter, and cool in the summer.

Since SPF acts as an air barrier, it also helps to reduce moisture infiltration, which is a source of dangerous mold and mildew growth in the home, and can cause severe health problems to its occupants. So save your family and save money at the same time with SPF home insulation systems. Moisture infiltration can also cause structural damage to your home or building.

Helps Reduce Moisture and Mold
Molds produce tiny spores to reproduce. Mold spores waft through the indoor and outdoor air continually. When mold spores land on a damp spot indoors, they may begin growing and digesting whatever they are growing on in order to survive. There are molds that can grow on wood, paper, carpet, and foods. When excessive moisture or water accumulates indoors, mold growth will often occur, particularly if the moisture problem remains undiscovered or un-addressed. There is no practical way to eliminate all mold and mold spores in the indoor environment; the way to control indoor mold growth is to control moisture. SPF insulation is the key

Enhances Overall Building Stability
Since SPF is seamless and monolithic, foam sprayed into the walls enhances overall building stability and reduces “rack and sheer.” More...

Deadens Sound Travel and Noise
SPF also reduces airborne sound making the home acoustically tighter and more private from room to room.

Can Spray Foam Help an Existing Home?

Why retrofit an existing home with spray polyurethane foam?

The vast majority of existing homes in the world are insulated with a air-use insulator ( fiberglass, cellulose ). They are expected to insulate our homes and buildings based on the assumption of dead air and only the principles of advection and convection (R-factor).

The problem is that the forces working against the envelope of the building are much more powerful and diverse than the air use insulator can control. Let us take for instance the R-30 loose fill in most attics; it takes just a couple of hours for the radiant heat from the attic to build to 140 degrees and go completely through the R-30 and start heating up your house and running up you power bill, most especially if your HVAC system and ducts are in the attic. When the sun goes down and your house should be cooling off the air-use insulator is holding the heat in and therefore not allowing the house cool off for several hours.

Winter time is the time of year that conventional insulation really becomes an energy eater. When the air in a home is heated the house becomes a hot air balloon, even though it will not raise off the ground, all the same physics of lift apply. When you heat the air; it wants to rise and it passes through the loose fill or batt insulation in your attic flooring. When this happens it takes the temperature and moisture that has accumulated in the living envelope and moves into the attic. Because of the air mass expanding (static pressure) in the summer months, we have had to vent the attic to relieve the pressure outside instead of it pushing into the living area. These same vents allow the pressure, temperature, and moisture you just paid to have in your home to escape. When air leaves the vents in the roof, replacement air must come in, bringing in cold air to be re-heated (Air Loss/Air Gain).

In retro fitting an existing home you must look first at where your money will be most well spent. The roof area of a house consumes as much as 35% of the energy needed to heat and cool a home. The crawl space of a home can consume up to 30% and the walls, windows and doors the balance. By spraying open cell polyurethane foam against the roof deck of the building you will stop all the radiant energy from entering the structure. In climates like those in the south, the high humidity from outside is prevented from entering the house. If there is no radiant energy there is no expanding air mass. If there is no expanding air mass you do not need vents. By eliminating the vents, you have now stopped your heat rise loss in the winter months and have kept your HVAC system from working overtime in the summer.

The roof area of a house should be the first area sprayed as it is the largest energy consumer of the envelope. The floor or crawl space should be next. We advise not trying to re-insulate walls as the payback on a 18% loss would be cost prohibitive and not practical.

When we heat and cool the air in our houses we are doing so because we don’t like what is going on out of doors. When we do this it puts the building envelope in direct opposition to the most powerful force on earth, the atmosphere.

Installing open cell polyurethane foam allows your HVAC system to work less which saves you money. The energy savings payback on installing this type of foam is 3-7 years.

Why Use Spray Foam?

Make your home more energy efficient with Insulation and Windows

• Cut heating & cooling costs by up to 50%
• Reduce monthly utility bills…forever
• Increase your home’s value
• Increase comfort year round

Choose from a broad selection of energy efficient solutions:

• Foam Insulation
• Fiberglass Insulation
• Vinyl Replacement Windows

Learn more: How Spray Foam Works and What is Spray Foam Insulation.

Spray Foam - Hurricane Preparedness

SPF vs. Hurricane Hugo

The Roofing System That Can Stand Up to High-Wind Disasters
"The application of Sprayed foam to steel deck and plywood deck demonstrated uplift load resistance up to the capacity of the test equipment to develop load (160-165 psf) without any sign of elimination or other damage to the foam." - Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.


Sprayed polyurethane foam roof resists wind uplift

These two buildings in Puerto Rico are located just a few yards apart, so they both received the same degree of wind force when Hurricane Hugo stormed over the island. The building on the left received major damage as wind uplift ripped off a portion of the roof. The building on the right has a sprayed polyurethane foam roof which held tight. There was no peeling, penetration or water leakage. Polyurethane foam is self-flashing--it forms a seal that grips the building wall and roof-mounted equipment so there are no edges for the wind to lift up and peel away.

This church survived the tornado that cut a path of destruction through Plainfield, Illinois. The building was completely covered in sprayed polyurethane foam. There was repairable missile damage to the exterior surface, yet the sealed polyurethane foam helped to strengthen the building and resist uplift from the high-force winds. Because polyurethane foam is spray-applied, it can conform to any shape and provide a sealed envelope of protection.

SPF vs Hurricane Andrew

SPF roofing holds it together during hurricane-force storms

Ten years ago, Hurricane Andrew wrought unprecedented economic devastation on the northwestern Bahamas, the southern Florida peninsula and south central Louisiana. According to the National Hurricane Center, the hurricane caused more than $26 billion damage in the United States. Before Sept. 11, Hurricane Andrew was the most expensive disaster in U.S. history.

The insurance industry identifies roofing as the primary contributor to disaster-related insured losses. The roof and exterior glass are the most vulnerable parts of the building envelope in any wind event. Because a damaged roof can expose the building’s interior — and its inhabitants — to the storm’s wrath, the total cost of a roof blow-off can rise as quickly as the storm’s own momentum.

Since Andrew’s devastation, many materials manufacturers and members of the roofing industry, along with members of the insurance industry, code officials, architects and consultants, have invested countless dollars and hours identifying ways to mitigate the damage caused by roof failure during wind events.

The reason for roof failure can often be found in the very design of membrane roof systems. Wind often grabs the edge flashing or coping and peels back portions of the membrane.

In comparison, spray polyurethane foam has gained recognition with industry experts for its ability to withstand high wind uplift and blow-off because its smooth, continuous surface grips the deck and walls. It offers superior adhesion with no need for fasteners and there are no joints or edges for the wind to grab onto. Lightweight yet rigid, it provides extra strength to help the roof stand up to the forces of nature.

“SPF has tenacious adhesion and there’s no way it will ever blow off,” says Richard Fricklas, founding father and former technical director of the Roofing Industry Educational Institute. “It sticks to anything with very high pull-off strength. The minimum strength of SPF would be about 10 pounds per square inch and most blow-offs concern pounds per square foot. Even if the blow-off strength was only 1 pound per square inch, by the time you multiply it by 144 square inches in a square foot, that would still be 144 pounds per square foot of wind uplift resistance.”

Field Studies

Hurricane Andrew struck southern Dade County, Fla., especially hard, with violent winds characteristic of a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale. In Dade County alone, the forces of Andrew resulted in 15 deaths and up to 250,000 people were left temporarily homeless. An additional 25 lives were lost in Dade County from the indirect effects of Andrew.

When it was over, Thomas L. Smith of TLSmith Consulting, and then research director for the National Roofing Contractors Association, went to Florida to see first-hand how SPF had weathered the storm.

“Two things stood out in my mind after my field studies — one was SPF’s adhesion and the other its ability to accommodate wind-born debris or ‘missiles,’” Smith reports. “A missile will tear into or gouge out the foam, but the roof will not leak. Typically there are a lot of missiles flying around during a hurricane, so that’s a significant advantage.”

In his published report of his findings post-Andrew, Smith provides a detailed assessment of the wind performance of 11 SPF roofs. Three of the buildings were in areas of very high winds, one in an area of high winds and seven in areas of moderately high winds.

Two of the three roofs in the very high wind zones were SPF over old BUR; the third was SPF over thin-shell concrete. Two of the three roofs sustained minor damage from missiles. One of the SPF-over-BUR roofs experienced peeling that did not progress beyond an area of missile impact.

“Often foam is applied over existing roof coverings and I did see a number of buildings in South Florida where this was the case,” says Smith. “If the underlying roof is weak and it lifts up, it will take the SPF with it. But it appeared to me, although it’s difficult to quantify, that the foam acted as a stiffener, so when the original roof lifted up the failure did not propagate as far into the field of the roof. You might have a corner peeled back, but the corner area would be limited because of the stiffening influence of the foam. Had the foam not been applied there, I think the roof failure would’ve been much larger. I feel very strongly about that, but it is very hard to quantify.”

Other buildings with traditional roofing systems in a 200-foot radius surrounding the SPF-over-BUR roof that peeled suffered significant damage, including gable-end wall failure and collapsed trusses, as well as blown-off sheathing panels and asphalt shingles. One building had reportedly had its BUR blown off.

Smith says that if SPF is going to fail during a wind event, it is because the surface it has been applied to has failed. “Typically, the foam is not going to lift unless whatever it is sprayed to lifts,” he says. “If the deck itself is not adequately attached, everything above it could just come off the supporting joists or beams, so that would be one failure mode. It could also fail if an element between the deck and the foam doesn’t have good adhesion or if the SPF is applied to an existing membrane that is not adequately attached.”

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