Open-cell foam insulation in Los Banos CA - a house that stops leaking air

Most calls I get start with a hot upstairs, a drafty room over the garage or a power bill that won't come down, and the first question is whether foam is worth it. Foam costs more than loose fill, so if your ducts aren't up in the attic, attic air sealing and a top-up of blown-in insulation usually do the job, and I'll tell you that. When the ductwork does live up there, foam under the roof brings those ducts inside the part of the house you heat and cool, and that's where it earns its price. The price moves with how much area we cover, how thick the foam goes on, how hard the space is to reach and whether anything has to be fixed or pulled out first. The schedule turns on that prep and on the time your family needs to be out while the foam cures. Your estimate lays each of those out on its own line. We're based in Los Banos and work in the cities around it.

Open-cell is for spots that stay dry, so before I recommend it I go up the ladder and check where it's going for roof leaks, wet framing, droppings and wiring that needs attention. Anything wet or damaged gets fixed or pulled out first, because foam sprayed over a problem just hides it. On install day our crew covers floors and anything we can't move, seals the gaps, then sprays the foam to the depth written on your estimate, since that depth is what does the air sealing. We check it at the edges as well as the middle, because the edges are where a job usually comes up thin, then trim, clean up and leave your house the way we found it, just with the work done.

Open-cell isn't the answer everywhere. The dirt under a house puts moisture into the air, so in a crawl space we usually start with a crawl space vapor barrier, a heavy plastic sheet over the ground, and keep the foam for spaces that stay dry. For shops and metal buildings, our commercial insulation work handles the bigger spaces and the different choices those buildings need.

California's Energy Code sets energy and indoor air requirements that reach alterations to existing homes, not just new ones, and what it asks of the shell of your house, the roof, walls and floors between you and the weather, depends on which of the state's climate zones you're in. So the plan for a Los Banos attic follows the state's rules for this zone, not a rule of thumb from somewhere else. If your job needs a permit, we pull it, set up the inspection and tell you before we start, and when it isn't clear whether one's needed, we ask the city or county building office first.

Plenty of houses around here have ductwork running through the attic and a room added on over the garage or off the back, and those additions are often where the comfort problem lives. We find the same thing on jobs in Dos Palos and Newman, so that's usually where I start looking.