Open-cell foam insulation in Fort Worth TX - a sealed attic or wall that stops drafts

Most people who call us have a hot room upstairs, a drafty room over the garage or a power bill that keeps climbing, and they've heard foam fixes it. Sometimes it does. The price turns on how much attic or wall area we're covering, whether the foam goes under the roof or between wall studs, and whether old, dirty insulation has to come out first through insulation removal. The schedule mostly turns on what has to be fixed before we spray, like a roof leak or wet framing, and on when your household can be out of the house. We're based in Fort Worth and work in many of the cities around it, and I'll give you your own figure once I've looked at the job.

I start by looking at your attic and walls, because I want to see how many inches are already up there, any stains on the roof deck, which is the boards under your shingles, and where the ductwork runs before I suggest anything. If there's a roof leak, wet wood or droppings in the old insulation, I'll tell you to deal with that first, since foam sprayed over a problem just covers it up. Open-cell is the lower-cost foam and stops air well, but it lets moisture vapor through, so I only suggest it where that won't cause trouble. Under a roof we pay close attention to getting the deck sealed tight, and in walls the foam comes with a plan for handling moisture. On install day our crew covers floors and anything nearby, sprays the foam, trims it flush where it needs to be and cleans up before we leave.

Some of the same foam work goes into offices, shops and rental buildings, so property managers and business owners can see what we do for them on our commercial insulation page. If the trouble starts under the house, a damp crawl space usually needs a crawl space vapor barrier, a heavy liner laid over the dirt to hold ground moisture down, before foam makes sense anywhere near it.

Fort Worth works from the international energy code but writes in its own local changes, so what a foam job has to meet here may not match what you read online. Before the work starts, I check with the city's building office about what your job needs, and we take care of any permit and inspection on our end.

Around Fort Worth we usually find the air handler and ducts up in the attic, where summer heat bakes them and makes the upstairs rooms hard to cool. Older houses tend to have a few settled inches of insulation and open gaps around can lights, pipes and the attic hatch. Newer houses often have decent insulation on the attic floor and still run hot because the ducts sit in a hot attic. We see the same mix on jobs in Haltom City and Burleson, and we handle it the same way, checking what's already there before choosing where foam belongs.