Wall work is the item we talk people out of most often, and on the newer half of Coaldale the reason is simple arithmetic. A house framed after 1991 generally has a deep exterior wall with batts in every cavity, and those batts are doing roughly what they were designed to do. The money spent opening that wall buys a small improvement. The money spent on four specific locations in the same wall buys a noticeable one.
The four places a newer wall actually leaks
The outside corner, where two walls meet and the framing is doubled up with a void behind it that frequently has no insulation in it at all. The intersection where an interior partition meets the exterior wall, which creates the same void. The rough opening around every window and door, filled with a bead of foam on installation day and never inspected. And the wall shared with the attached garage, which is an exterior wall in every meaningful sense and is almost never treated as one.
None of those is a cavity problem. All of them are air-path problems, and insulation does not stop air movement. Air sealing does.
The moment a whole wall becomes worth doing
There is one. When the cladding comes off, the sheathing is exposed, and the wall is open from outside, the cost of access drops to nothing because somebody else is already paying for it. In southern Alberta siding gets replaced more often than it does in most of the country, and when it goes, that is the week to decide about the wall.
From the outside the work is different and better: a continuous layer over the sheathing rather than a cavity fill, no interior finish disturbed, no furniture moved, and the thermal bridging through the studs addressed rather than ignored. If a siding job is coming, tell us before the scaffold goes up rather than after.
The older half of town, where the cavity really is the problem
In the old grid the walls are shallow, the sheathing is boards rather than panels, and what is in the cavity might be nothing, might be shavings, might be a thin batt from a 1970s upgrade. There the cavity genuinely is the issue, and there are only three honest ways in: from the inside by removing the finish, from the outside by removing the cladding, or by injection through holes, which is a different trade and a different product from sprayed foam.
We will tell you which of the three applies to your house and we will say plainly when the answer is to wait for the cladding.
Moisture, and the one thing to be careful about
A wall has to be able to dry in at least one direction. Filling a shallow older cavity solid with closed-cell against board sheathing and old cladding removes the drying path on the inside and leaves the exterior to do all of it, which on a wall with multiple layers of paint is not always possible. On that stock we often specify less than a full fill, or open-cell with a controlled vapour layer, rather than the thickest thing available. A contractor who offers the same wall assembly for every house in town is not thinking about where the water goes.
We take care of the work
We quote the job, schedule it and stand behind it, and our own installers do the work on wall spray foam insulation Coaldale. You deal with us from the first site visit to the last pass of foam.
Wall Spray Foam Insulation Coaldale: Common Questions
Our 2004 house feels draughty at the corners. Is the wall empty? The cavities are almost certainly full. The corner framing void and the partition intersections are the usual culprits and both are air leaks rather than insulation gaps.
Is injection foam the same thing? No. Injection is a different product installed through holes in a closed cavity by a different method. It has its uses on older walls and it is not what is described on this page.
We are re-siding next spring. Does that change anything? It changes everything about the cost of a wall job. With the cladding off the wall can be treated from outside, which is the better assembly and the cheaper access.
How much does wall spray foam insulation cost in Coaldale? The foam is priced per board foot over the sprayed area, but on a wall the access dominates: removing and replacing a finish, inside or out, is usually a larger line than the insulation. That is why the four small items are such better value on newer stock.
How do I choose a wall spray foam contractor in Coaldale? Ask what they would do if you only had a quarter of the budget. If the answer is still the whole wall rather than the corners, the openings and the garage wall, keep asking.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Coaldale quote. More on Wall Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.