Spray foam insulation in Vegreville

About 83% of dwellings in Vegreville were built before 1991 - the highest pre-1991 share of any community we cover in Alberta. Four out of five houses here predate the point at which air-tightness became a serious part of how buildings were put together.

That is not a criticism of the housing. It is simply the single most useful fact for deciding what to do about heating costs.

What "old stock" actually means in a wall

Pre-1991 covers a wide range, and the older end of Vegreville's housing is genuinely old. As you go back through the eras you tend to lose things:

Later stock generally has batt insulation in the cavities and some form of vapour barrier, though rarely a continuous one, and rarely any deliberate air sealing.

Older stock may have thin or settled insulation, a vapour barrier that is partial or absent entirely, and framing that was never intended to be airtight. Some of it relies on the wall being able to dry freely in both directions - which is exactly why you cannot simply seal it up without thinking.

This matters more here than in a town with newer housing, because the chance that your house is at the older end of that range is higher.

Do not seal an old wall blindly

The instinct with a leaky old house is to seal everything. In an assembly that has spent decades drying through its own leakiness, closing it up without understanding where moisture goes can move a problem rather than solve it.

The safe, high-value work in an old house is usually at the boundaries rather than inside the walls:

• The attic. Sealing penetrations, top plates and the hatch, then insulating. This is where most of the loss is and it carries the least assembly risk. See attic spray foam.
• The rim joist. Almost always the leakiest accessible point, and almost always worth doing. See rim joist insulation.
• The basement or crawlspace. Where cold floors originate. See basement and crawl space.

Wall injection into an existing old wall is a different proposition and needs a proper look first. Injecting spray foam into existing walls and when not to use spray foam both cover why we would rather assess than assume.

If your house has no vapour barrier at all, say so. It genuinely changes the recommendation. See vapour barrier and spray foam.

Farm buildings east of Edmonton

Mixed grain and livestock farming surrounds Vegreville, bringing the usual shops, machine sheds, quonsets and grain-handling structures.

The governing question in any steel building is whether the assembly stops humid interior air reaching the cold deck, because that is what condenses and drips. See agricultural spray foam, the quonset guide, and stopping condensation in a metal building.

What we do

We are a referral service. We do not install. We connect you with vetted installers and check certification, insurance and WCB standing before an introduction.

We will not quote without seeing the building, and in a house this old we would rather look before recommending anything at all.

Get a quote and tell us roughly when the house was built. In Vegreville that is the question that decides everything else.