Commercial insulation in Fort Worth TX - a building shell that keeps the heat out

At Apex Fort Worth Spray Foam Insulation, the calls from property managers and business owners usually start with a suite that won't cool down, a back office that's always cold or a utility bill that keeps going up. The price moves with how much wall and roof area you're insulating, the method you pick, how much prep the shell needs and whether old material has to come out first through insulation removal. The schedule turns on whether we're spraying foam, because the space has to sit empty for a while, and on when the city inspector can see the work before it's covered. I come out, look at the building and give you the estimate myself, so you get a figure for your building and not a guess.

I start by walking the building and looking for what has to be fixed before anything goes in, like a roof leak, wet framing or gaps where outside air pours through, because insulation laid over those won't do much for you. If the roof needs repair first, I'll tell you that before I sell you anything. Then we choose the method for each wall and the roof and plan the schedule around your business, including the stretch when the space has to sit empty for spray foam and the day the city inspector needs to see the work. Before we insulate, we ask the electrician, plumber and HVAC crew to finish anything that runs through the walls, and when they can't, we mark where they still need to go so nobody cuts into finished insulation later. After that, our crew seals the gaps, installs the insulation and cleans up, and I run the work alongside them.

Some buildings need moisture handled before insulation makes sense. If yours sits over a crawl space, a crawl space vapor barrier keeps ground moisture away from the floor framing, and where a wall or ceiling needs a layer to stop damp air working into it, we do the vapor barrier installation as part of the same job.

In Fort Worth, any work that needs a permit gets inspected by the city's Building Official, and it has to stay open and exposed until it's approved, so the insulation can't be covered until the inspector signs off. The state adopts the energy code for commercial buildings, and the city's local changes to that code call for the insulation materials and their R-values to be spelled out for the job. Whether your particular job needs a permit is the city's call, so before the work starts we check with the city's building office about what the job needs and take care of any permit and inspection on our end.

Many of the commercial buildings we see around Fort Worth are older offices, strip centers and shop buildings with a flat or metal roof over a hot ceiling space, and in our summers that roof is where most of the heat comes in. We look there first and check for leaks and stained decking before we quote anything, because foam or batts over a wet deck just hide the problem. We meet the same kinds of buildings on jobs in Haltom City and North Richland Hills.