Shortly after we were married, my husband and I moved into a 700-square-foot home. As space was limited, we sought furniture that served more than one purpose. Our favorite purchase was a bed with four drawers at the base. The fact that our bed could also act as a dresser was very convenient given the scarcity of space in our home. People love when they buy a product and find out that it has more than one use. The more versatile it is, the better. Don’t believe me? Just ask a woman who has discovered that a dress she recently purchased has pockets. In fact, you probably don’t even need to ask her because she’s probably already told you about it.
Think about the make-up of your home for a minute. What are the functions of each part? If I say air cleanliness, you may attribute that to your HVAC system and a good air filter. If I say structural integrity, you may give credit to the wood, bricks, nails, and concrete that are holding your home together. The words “vapor barrier” will probably make you think of the plastic sheeting that home builders put on the outside walls when the house is under construction. While all of these thoughts are true, did you know that there is one product that can help with all of these things and then some? What is this miracle product, you might ask? The answer is simple and lies literally within the walls of your home. The product that I am talking about is your home’s insulation.
Advantages of Foam Insulation: It Can Keep You Warm…AND Cool
When most people think about the properties of insulation, they immediately think of the fact that insulation is there to keep you warm. The pink fiberglass insulation in most homes even looks a little like the wool of a sweater. Insulation does, in fact, work to keep your home warm. Its main job is to stop heat transfer. If it works to keep your warm air from escaping in the winter, the opposite is also true. Not only can it keep you warm, but it can also keep you cool. During the summer, the hot air constantly tries to move into your cool air-conditioned home. The insulation in your home acts like a cooler and is a barrier that stops the hot air from creeping into your house.
Insulation’s Hidden Talents
Insulation can be good for many things…if it’s the correct type of insulation. It’s important to recognize and know that not all types of insulation are created equally. That means that not all types of insulation will have these same benefits. Since I want to talk about all the benefits you can get from your insulation, I will be talking about the type of insulation that can give you all of these benefits. That insulation type is foam; it can be spray or injection foam.
Air Seal
The most important advantages of foam insulation is the air seal it creates. What that means is that when the foam is installed, it is able to fill in all the nooks and crannies of your wall cavity. It will fill the cavity from top to bottom and side to side filling in any gaps that might allow air to flow from the outside of your home to the inside of your home and vice versa.
Money Saver
This air seal is valuable in many ways. First off, it will save you big bucks when it comes to your energy bill simply because you will be using less energy. Not only that, but it will cause the temperature in your home to be more regulated, which means that you will run your HVAC system less, reducing wear and tear. That means you will have to repair/replace your HVAC less frequently.
Structural Integrity
Another of the advantages of foam insulation is it fills all of the nooks and crannies in your wall cavity. As it hardens, it adheres to all the surfaces it touches. The foam’s rigidity will add to the structural integrity of your home.
Sound Barrier
While foam will not make your home soundproof, it definitely will act as a sound barrier and help dampen sounds. As stated in our blog, Trains, Planes, Automobiles, and Roosters? How RetroFoam Can Help With Noise Reduction,” this happens for the same reason it is a better insulator for your home. It creates an air seal and mitigates the airflow in the stud cavities. By filling these cavities and voids, the foam cuts down on the resonance.
Clean Air and Moisture Barrier
While these two things are two separate advantages of foam insulation, they are closely related. Let’s focus on cleaner air in your home first. When air moves freely between your home and the outside due to a lack of an air seal, it will bring lots of allergens. Some of the allergens will get thrown in with the air circulation in your home. And the air will also deposit some of them in the fiberglass or cellulose insulation in your walls.
Now let’s talk about moisture. When air can move freely, it will cause moisture to be deposited in your insulation as it moves from hot to cold, as cold air cannot hold as much moisture as warmer air. This moisture is a great place for mold and mildew to start growing, thus affecting the air quality in your home. Foam will act as a vapor barrier and keep this from happening.
Contact Us
If you are interested in gaining all of the benefits that the versatility of spray and injection foam have to offer you, contact one of our foam experts today for a free estimate.
