The Problem with Spray Foam Insulation | Ep. 48

The reason that, not the reason, but one of the reasons that I think this is such an important conversation is by sheer volume.

So something I'll often have conversations with with our clients on is looking at what's going to have the biggest impact on your home, what's going to move the needle in the name of occupant health, and what's actually the big conversations we should have and spray foam is one of those big conversations but it's not just spray foam it's your insulation choice as a whole because again by volume if you look at every exterior wall of your home and maybe some interior walls there's going to be insulation it needs to be a really big topic because it's going to have a big impact on the indoor air quality of your home and occupant health spray foam is not a new product it's been around for for many years, well over 20 years spray foam has been used.

Now it's picked up a lot more steam over recent years, purely due because of the efficiency of it, the speed of it, and because building codes have been leaning towards more and more airtight enclosures.

And spray foam does that really well.

And it's not an inexpensive material.

So it's not a cost savings material compared to the old traditional bats, like the pink fiberglass bat insulation.

It's definitely a cost increase to that.

But spray foam does three things.

really well it air seals it also provides a higher r value so think of insulation it provides a higher r value per inch among any other insulation type and in some varieties it can also act as a vapor barrier So think about this, if your home needed air sealing, really high R value and like vapor impermeability, you just knocked out all three of those by going with closed cell spray foam insulation.

That is why builders really like it.

And it's much faster to do all three of those in one go.

That's great.

But it does come with downsides.

It does come with big downsides.

One of the biggest is that it requires perfect application for all three of those to be done really well.

Homebuilding is not the place for perfection.

We're dealing with humans, human error, human hands.

Perfection is not a part of homebuilding.