Fun with Foam

If you overhear a conversation about insulation choices these days, you might mistakenly think you were in a biology class.  Terms like open cell, closed cell, and cellulose are tossed around and can quickly become confusing.  Insulation is an important step in this rebuild, and we wanted to make sure were were installing the best insulating products, balanced against our budget.  We elected to use a combination of insulation techniques. largely spray foam, and the process was pretty fascinating.

Insulation day arrived and so did two huge trucks.

First a layer of closed cell spray foam insulation was applied.  Closed cell insulation is extremely dense and provides a higher R-value than most other insulation, and is more resistant to leakage of air or water vapor.  It is like a hard "outer" shell once applied and dried.

After the closed cell insulation was installed, the open cell foam was sprayed in.  Open cell is less dense, but still provides excellent insulating properties, and it is applied in a thicker layer over the closed cell foam.

It looks like a large amount of cake batter, but it also quickly dries hard:

The excess open cell spray insulation is simply sheared even with the framing after it dries:

 

The end result is smooth, fully insulated, and drywall ready walls:

The ceilings were then insulated with cellulose insulation (recycled cellulosic materials like newspapers and cardboard, with a fire retardant) held in place by netting.  Cellulose insulation is natural and provides good insulation, but does tend to settle quite a bit when used in walls.

All that's left, insulation-wise, is the crawl space.  We are ready for drywall!