Monday, July 09, 2007

Insulation

Insulating this place is turning out to be more difficult than I thought.

I had ordered some cans of spray insulation from TigerFoam. It's two tanks of chemical that run through hoses and mix as they come out of the sprayer. A thin layer of foam gets applied to the wall which then expands to fill the space between the studs and then some. You need a blade to cut off the extra so you can put up your wall covering.
What actually happened was that the swivel where the hose connects to the tanks leaked so that more chemical came out there than out the sprayer. What little made it out wasn't mixed in the right proportions so the thin layer of foam never expanded. Instead it ran down through the gap in the floor so it dripped on the door on the first floor leaving a mark that I can't get off. There's more on the shower floor that won't come off and some stuck to the glass on a ceiling fan that also won't come off. And then I have two tanks half full that I can't dispose of.

The next best thing is to hire the professionals. If I'm going to do this I'd prefer the soy based stuff. Ok, it's only 2% soy so it's not that great a difference. That's pretty much why it's preferred instead of demanded. Also, with different kinds of spray insulation the spray equipment needs to be adjusted to get the ratios right. This takes time so they don't really want to switch the types very often. So nobody wants to use the soy stuff unless you're willing to buy them a whole new sprayer. New sprayers are in the $10,000 and up area.

Plus, they're gonna want whatever room they work in clear of my personal junk. This would mean them making several trips as I move my entire life from room to room while playing Tetris with my valuables.

I'd prefer to do this myself. That's why I got the TigerFoam in the first place. So I take a look at styrofoam insulation. This stuff is supposed to be installed during construction. It goes on the outside of the wall so the studs aren't a leaking point. My house is already built.
For crawl spaces it's a bit different. They want me to first insulate the ground and then insulate the walls of the crawlspace. I want to insulate under the floor. I may still decide to get the thick, rigid sheets of styrofoam and ... I dunno, glue them(?) under the house(?). They come in 4'x8' sheets so they'd have to be cut to fit.

For the inside of the house I can still resort to rolls of the Pink Panther stuff. It's easy to do. However, it's the lesser of all possible insulations. I'd probably be better off cutting up sheets of the thick, rigid styrofoam.

Crud. I'm still probably gonna have some crew come in and spray in the non-soy insulation. If I do it right I might even get them to do two rooms on the same day. I can't see them doing the crawlspace at all.

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