About 56% of homes in Sundre were built before 1991. Residential spray foam insulation in Sundre covers the whole house rather than one assembly, and on this stock the order of work matters more than the choice of product. What makes a house here different from the same house somewhere else is not only its age. It is that the household living in it works and plays outdoors, and the building has to absorb that.
A house that doubles as a staging area
Households in this town come and go through the back door with wet gear. Boots, coats, chaps, waders, sled suits, dog towels and whatever came off a machine. The entry, the mud room and the attached garage take all of it, and they are the parts of the house most often built as an afterthought: an addition on a different foundation, a porch that got enclosed, a garage with a shared wall nobody sealed.
That is where we start on most Sundre houses, because those spaces carry three problems at once. They are the leakiest part of the envelope, they are the wettest part of the interior, and they sit between a heated house and an unheated building. Sealing the wall and ceiling between the garage and the house, and treating the floor and walls of an added-on entry, usually produces a bigger change in how the house feels than anything done to the main walls.
Then the ceiling plane
After the entry, the ceiling. On a house of this vintage the ceiling is a surface with a dozen openings in it, and warm moist air leaves through all of them continuously. On a still clear night in this valley, with cold air pooled in the river bottom, the roof sheathing above those openings runs cold enough to frost. Sealing the penetrations, the top plates and the attic hatch with foam, and then restoring depth over the top, is the standard sequence. Adding depth without sealing first is the most common way money gets spent here with nothing to show for it.
Then the band at the top of the foundation
The rim joist is the third item and the one with the best return for its size. It is a narrow strip of timber running the whole way round the house, it is rarely insulated properly on a pre-1991 build, and it has every service penetration in it: the gas line, the hose bibs, the dryer vent, the electrical entry and the ledger bolts of whatever deck has been added. Sprayed closed-cell seals and insulates it in one pass and it is usually a single-day item.
Which foam, plainly
Closed-cell, at roughly R-6 to R-7 per inch, is the choice anywhere moisture or depth is the constraint: below grade, against concrete, in the rim joist, in a shallow rafter, on a garage ceiling. It becomes a vapour barrier at about two inches. Open-cell, at roughly R-3.5 to R-3.8 per inch, is lighter and softer and belongs in interior partitions where sound is the objective. Neither of them stops air on its own by being thick; they stop it by being continuous, which is why the detailing matters more than the depth.
Who does the work
We do residential spray foam insulation Sundre ourselves. We scope and quote it, we book it, and our own installers spray it -- one company, one point of contact.
Residential Spray Foam Insulation Sundre: Common Questions
Where should we start on an older house in town? The entry, the garage wall and the ceiling plane, in that order, then the rim joist. Walls come last and only when they are open anyway.
Is it worth doing anything if we are not renovating? Yes. The ceiling plane, the rim joist and the garage wall are all reachable without opening up finished rooms.
Why does the back of the house feel colder than the front? Usually because the back of the house is an addition on a different foundation with a different and poorer envelope. It is very common on this stock.
How much does residential spray foam insulation cost in Sundre? It is priced item by item, by area and depth, which is the useful way to receive it, because almost nobody does a whole house at once. Ask for the items listed separately so you can stage them over a few seasons.
How do I choose a residential spray foam contractor in Sundre? Ask them what they would do first and why. If the answer is the walls on a house with an unsealed ceiling plane, the order is wrong.
Size each item with the R-value calculator, then get a free Sundre quote. More on Residential Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.