Multi-family spray foam insulation in Edson is work on walk-up blocks, fourplexes and townhouse rows, most of them built when the town needed housing quickly. The problems in them are consistent enough that a landlord who has one building has usually seen all of it.
Housing built in a boom and kept in a slower decade
This stock went up in waves tied to what the mill and the gas industry were doing, built to the standard of the year and built fast. Then it was held through quieter years when nobody was spending on envelopes. The result is a set of buildings that are structurally fine and thermally unfinished, with thin wall assemblies, an uninsulated band at every floor level in the block and party walls put in for separation rather than for performance. A landlord here is not fixing damage, they are finishing something that was never completed.
The stairwell is a chimney in a cold town
An open stairwell in a walk-up connects the bottom of the building to the top, and in a long cold winter the difference in temperature between those two points drives air upward continuously. Cold air is pulled in at the ground floor entrance and pushed out at the top, which is why the lowest suite is always cold and the top one is always stuffy, and why neither complaint is fixed by adjusting heat. Sealing the top of an Edson block is what reduces the pull, and it usually improves both ends at once.
Damp in the units that never get sun
In a town with this much shade and this little drying weather, the units on the north side and the ones tucked behind trees are a different building from the ones facing open ground. They run colder, they hold moisture longer and they are where the window condensation, the mould complaints and the turnover in an Edson building concentrate. That is a useful pattern for a landlord with a limited budget, because it says which suites to treat first without needing anybody to measure anything.
The suite that comes empty in the middle of winter
Access is the whole difficulty in occupied buildings, and the honest version is that the work happens when a unit is between tenants. In this town that frequently means winter, which is inconvenient and is also when a vacancy is most likely. A landlord who is ready to move when a suite empties, with the scope already priced, gets the building done a unit at a time over a couple of years. One who waits for a convenient block of vacancies never starts.
Multi-family Spray Foam Insulation Edson: Common Questions
Why is the bottom suite cold and the top one too warm? That is stack effect through the stairwell. Sealing the top of the building reduces the pull.
Which units should we do first? The ones that never get sun. They run colder and hold moisture, and that is where turnover comes from.
Do we have to empty the building? No. It is done a suite at a time as they turn over, which is why having the scope priced in advance matters.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Edson quote. More on Multi-family Spray Foam Insulation Alberta.