Fuel Ghoul

Modern Chemistry in Action: Spray Foam Insulation

Last week Fuel Ghoul rode along with a mobile spray foam insulation crew and got his eyes and ears filled with good information on how they insulate the exterior walls of upscale houses in Toronto.

Below are pictures and stories of the men and machines of AirSeal Toronto, spray foam insulation mobile appication crew. Here's the Support Tech opening the back door of the truck first thing in the morning. I followed and watched as he started the fifty kilowat diesel generator at the front of the trailer, and then powered up the compressors and pumps and switched on the heaters in the onboard Graco H-40 REACTOR, a two component proportioner that heats the liquids to the necessary temperatures to make perfect foam insulation.

Airseal uses the BASF Walltite Eco system which bills itself as 'the insulation that pays you back'.

 

Walltite Eco is a medium density polyurethane foam insulation system designed to improve the energy efficiency of residential, commerical and industrial buildings. Its composition includes some recycled plastic material, and a 'zero ozone depleting blowing agent' which makes it an environmentally friendlier green option than most other insulation alternatives.

Walltite ECO™ is a made by combining two component liquids, Elastospray 8000A Isocyanate and  Walltite Eco v.3 F Resin. These two liquids are heated under high pressure and mix as they leave the nozzel of the applicator's spray gun. The chemical reaction occurs in midair; the two hot liquids combine and expand rapidly to make a rigid foam.  As Walltite ECO™ is born, it goes from liquid to foam in seconds, expanding twenty to thirty times its original volume. It is completely dry within seconds, and is fully cured in twenty four hours.

Below is the onboard Graco H40 REACTOR temperature display panel, a two component proportioner which ensures the ingredients of the foam will be delivered at the right temperature and will be in the correct amounts to combine properly as far as fifty feet away from the truck, which is the length of the heated hose. Temperatures of A and B component are set to 115 degrees Farenheit.   

The barrels contain the two chemicals, isocyanate and resin which react to make foam.

They are heated under pressure and spring to life and literally take shape in mid air. By the time the material hits the wall, the reaction has occurred.

Here is the crew starting in the basement of a new home in Forest Hill. They start at the bpttom of the building doing the exterior wall 'headers' and work up and in as they go. The team takes over the jobsite for a few hours each day; they often work lunches and late into the evening to be there when the other contractors are absent.  These guys are very careful not to expose any other tradespeople to the noxious gasses often created during the spray foam application process (I had to wear a breathing mask, visor and cover-alls as I followed the applicator around the basement).

Spray Foam Tech Rolls Saran Wrap Around his Hazmat Helmeted Head

To the left, the prime applicator technician applys Saran wrap directly over his hazmat suit and visor. He wraps his whole head four or five times and will peel away layers as he works.  I chuckled as I watched him roll the Saran Warp around hs whole head. This is because the spray foam material will stick to his visor and make it impossible for him to see anything after about twenty minutes of spraying. He peels the wrap away as he goes. He will peel away the layers and eventually he'll need to reapply more which is far easier than trying to clean the plexiglass visor on his breather mask.

Read this Bizcovering business magazine article, What is it like to be a Spray Foam Insulation Guy? and you'll get a pretty good understanding of what these guys do all day long.

The foam adheres to virtually any surface, providing a gap-free, airtight envelope of low permeability even in extreme hot or cold weather, and Walltite Eco is specially composed so it does not support fungus or mold growth.

Its a fact that sunlight, which contains ultraviolet light degrades polyurethane foam, and so it must be covered and protected from direct exposure. In some situations this job falls to the support tech.

The support tech is the truck minder; he keeps an eye on fluid levels and temperatures and pressure. He changes tanks when liquids run low. He also watches the diesel generator in the truck, and helps the applicator move and adjust the long length of heated hose on site. This skilled and charismatic truck driver also keeps an eye on the property during the course of the day. Part of his duties include being a watchdog to keep everyone else away from the house when the spray foam work is being created and applied to walls inside.

Spray foam technicians are well trained by government sponsored health and safety reps, and BASF, and other chemical manufacturers product application training teams. All the same, spray foam insulation businesses and the process itself has been called into question lately, specifically by a recent CBC marketplace documentary news story showing how spray foam can go very wrong by examining the unlivable homes of justifiably some unhappy customers. But these are isolated cases, and even the highest-performing system will not work if it is not installed correctly. Only certified, approved applicators who have undergone rigorous training can install WALLTITE® Eco for example.

The Canadian Urethane Foam Contractors Association (CUFCA) with headquarters in Winnipeg Manitoba, estimates that spray foam insulation is installed in between 300,000 and 400,000 homes across Canada every year, and the numbers grows 30 to 40 percent larger each year. 

How much does spray foam cost?
The initial expense of insulating your building with Walltite ECO™ spray foam insulation is higher than using fiberglass at around $3 dollars per square foot, but it will actually add value to your building and save money on heating in the winter. Here in Canada, the initial costs can often be offset by the ability to downsize the heating and cooling systems and by taking advantage of government subsidies and green initiative building programs.

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Internal Gutter as Waterproofing Remedy for Wet Basement in Toronto

The real estate market in Toronto is red hot right now. It's a good time to sell investment property, esp residential houses, but not if the domicile has a wet basement.  If you want to sell a property in this city for top dollar, it must have a warm dry bottom layer.

After the 2013 record high rainfall levels for spring and summer months, most homes that have a freshly renovated basements now advertise that fact right under the For Sale sign on the front lawn.

Here's a house just north of Danforth and Broadview Ave in east Toronto that's getting waterproofing to cure condensation on the cement in the basement, and a little bit of runoff from the driveway during the spring melt. Its a beautoful home and having a wet basement could kill its market potential.

More details in this Bizcovering piece How a Waterproofing Company Fixes Wet Basement in Toronto From Inside House.  

Any kind of moisture can compromise framing, destroy carpeting, and ruin drywall, and make smelly crawl spaces. Some folks only use their basement for storage, but excessive condensation on cement walls can still buckle hardwood flooring above and invite mold and pests.

This job started by taking out the trash and cleaning up the modly insulation and drywall that was buried under paneling , and cleaning up the cement walls that flood every srping and fall.

The cinder blocks had to be drilled individually to puncture the cavities inside which can collect water.

It was through this window that all of the building supply materials were passed...

As you can see just below this window, the driveway is right beside the house, and the homeowner tried to put a bandaid on the problem by caulking the joint with the grey waterproof caulking; this is however little more than decporation, a ribbon of protection against the flash floods. When the ground is soaked from a week of rain, a summer storm can trigger a deluge.

In the case of this home, the driveway and lawn area, with a heavy clay soil, some of the water has nowhere to go.  It descends down the fissure at the side of the driveway above the basement region and so approximately 1500 square feet drains into this crevice and if you do that math that much square footage gathers 1,000 gallons of water for every inch of falling rain.

Wet basements flood according to the season in Toronto but for the most part there are five wet months: March, April, May and October, and November.

The standard procedure for drying out a wet basement is to first track down the source of the water. There are three main sources of basement flooding: condensation, run-off, subsurface seepage.

Ask how is the water flooding the basement?

Was the water in basement due to watershed run off? or from seepage (an underground water system which is by far the worst case scenario) or is the moisture due to condensation? Those are the three main ways in which moisture eneters the basement.

In this picture you can see the gravel on top of the special constructed filter hose that surrounds the plastic pipe. There is more about subterreanean landscaping on this Distillery Blog post which documents how waterlogged land can freeze and crack old brick walls in the downtown Toronto historic hotspot.

 

This homeowner in this case had runoff issues from the driveway above and so elected to have the local waterproofing company come into the home and dig an eight inch trench around the peremiter of the basement walls and then bury a perforated plastic pipe that's wrapped in this white plastic / polymer rubber hose filter. Then its all covered in gravel and finished*

Above this internal gutter to sump pump solution, a plastic membrane covers the wall and overlaps and ends at the gutter that has been dug below the wall.

To remedy all leaks and condensation, the solution would have to be tackled from the inside the house.

This is how you engineer a warm and dry basement.

Green Basement Renovations, Advanced Flooring and Insulation for Walls

Fuel Ghoul helps homeowners who are old friends finish their renovations, and install energy efficient appliances and advanced windows and doors before the start of the summer when their families are home making memories.

Professional speculators and building contractors who flip houses for a living must follow four basic rules,

1) They should try to make their client's space bigger by using newage building materials that are lighter, stronger and less bulky. Trimming an inch or two off the width of the walls can have a profound effect on the available space inside the home.

2) Professional contractors should endeavour to make the space brighter, by installing glass block in the exterior walls ( as seen below) or adding thermal windows into walls, or adding new sunrooms and skylights.

3) The experts should work to make the whole house more energy efficient by installing energy star appliances, and using new age building materials to capture heat loss. Best practices include designing thermal barriers and installing heat pumps. The latest trend is to put solar panels on the roof to collect the sunshine - free energy? It's not too late to get your solar rooftop subsidized by the Ontario Microfit program and the City ofToronto is where Hydro One most needs the power.

And finally,

4) The contractors should work to make the living space safer, and more efficient by redesigning utilitarian areas and removing walls and other barriers to movement, sight and sounds (unless sound barriers are required). The family room is gone, and now the whole first floor of the house is open and therein lives the modern family.

Smojoe describes how Kevin Dugald uses insulted wall panels and basement flooring to make over his basement into a showpiece of thermal efficiency and shag carpet comfort with a fireplace and big screen television opposite a huge long (sectional) leather couch and four easy chairs, two at each end. 

 

Below is Kevin Dugald remaking the ground floor of his townhouse in Toronto. The stairway in the sidewall to Kevin’s basement - the walls are composed of Amdry insulated wall panels and you can see me selecting the best examples at the Rona at Islington and 401 in Toronto. Its an investment property and he's doing a green flip, despite advice given in a recent magainze article, Green Flips Bring Only Red InK Kevin hopes future home buyers will appreciate the work he's put into remodeling the structure with green equipment and building materials.

There are a bunch of ways to make money transforming a thin, narrow Toronto townhouse into beautifully streamlined ship of convenience the whole family can enjoy.

RULES OF THUMB  one of the best ways to add value to the renovation is to brighten interiors and reclaim lost space by employing new age building materials. 

Kevin’s property in the Riverdale area of Toronto had already been ‘flipped’ a few different times by the time he bought it in 2010. The first floor had extensive renovations in the nineteen-eighties which completely remade its interior and did work to the exterior. Most Notably, the contractor had stuck some glass block in the exterior walls, in the kitchen area, to brighten up the counter tops. Say what you will about glass block, the idea is rather brilliant and does indeed define the room.

The glass block was added thirty years ago but still works to illuminate counter tops and food preparation areas with beautiful healthy daylight.

Kevin didn’t remove any interior walls.

Home Renovation Magazine Canada claims that removing the walls between the kitchen and living room remains the number one home renovation trend in the new millennium real estate contracting. I’m surprised that there are still any walls left to remove! Home renovations experts and interior designers have been drafting open concept living environments for almost sixty years now. Engineers are well paid to approve plans to remove structural walls and combine the kitchen and dining room into an open concept living space.

Kitchen islands become work platforms, cook stations and dish washing areas where the family meets, eats and finds entertainment.

basement renovations - start by lowering the floor and pouring a new conrete pad, then work up adding insulated walls and floors.

Kevin elected to use Amdry basement flooring which is screwed down directly into the slab which has to be pre drilled to accomodate the screws. Each 24″ x 48″ Amdry panels each provide a full 8 sq. ft. surface coverage. Amdry is a one-step insulated subfloor system with a moisture resistant protective surface film. It provides a healthy, comfortable, warm basement by significantly reducing slab surface moisture and temperature fluctuations that may lead to mold and mildew problems.

You can see more of the guys working and purchasingand then subsequently reselling basement flooring and insulated wall panels on Toronto Golf Nuts, and selling their surplus basement flooring and insulated wall panels on Red Flag Deals and a similar thread offering about insulated wall panels and basement flooring on Toronto Forums as the team liquidates the surplus for Kevin who characteristically overestimated and bought too much after being given a great price for a large order.

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