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My house is toasty…at least, half of it is

Tags: energy efficient, foam insulation, heating, icynene, insulation

I recently had some new insulation installed in the older half of my house. The new insulation is a spray-in type of expanding foam called Icynene, which differs from typical spray-foam or blown-in insulation because it is much safer and healthier. In fact, it is the only insulation approved by the American Lung Association. Besides being safe, Icynene is gap-filling, meaning there’s no airflow through your walls, as with traditional fiberglass insulation. The R-value is around 3.6 per inch of sprayed foam, meaning the 3.5″ in my walls have an R-value of 12.6 and the 5.5″ in the ceiling is yielding 19.8, both slightly above the typical R-19/11 fiberglass installation you find in many homes. According to the contractor that did the insulating, 4 Seasons Foam Insulators of New England, that R-value is actually not a good measure of how much better the insulation works, since the Icynene’s ability to fill gaps and stop airflow means that it is actually about 50% more effective than an equivalent installation of fiberglass.

After seeing the great job that 4 Seasons did, and how the acoustics of the rooms re-insulated had changed, I was pretty sure that the Icynene would be a huge improvement over the combination ratty-fiberglass-and-mouse-carcass insulation that was previously the only barrier between Mother Nature and my reptile collection. It was hard to tell though, since it was still summer and not at all cold. This morning, however, I noticed that the wind was blowing pretty strong and the temps are down to the 40s, and there’s a marked difference between the half of my house that was re-insulated (warm and snug) and the part that wasn’t (drafty, with freezing floors). It’s significant to note that the part of the house that didn’t have the insulation replaced is a relatively new addition, so the insulation in there, though fiberglass, should be in pretty good shape. Nonetheless, it’s no match for the Icynene, apparently.

The total cost for the project, including floor insulation, was under $4,000, not too bad considering it was about 40% of the house.