Avoid Costly Mistakes with Spray Foam Insulation Austin Tx

During your consult...

• • You will discover precisely what is going on in your home.
  • The truth about why you have high energy bills (and how to be energy efficient to lower your utility bills).
  • What is the hidden factor in your pest control issues?
  • Why are some rooms uncomfortable all the time?
  • Where we find the most significant indoor air quality problems.
  • The blower door test will reveal air leak locations.
  • Your options for fixing the problems (even if it doesn't include hiring Stellrr).
  • Thermal imaging shows hot and cold spots.
  • Why do Solar, HVAC, & Pest Control pros talk trash about this? (It is incredible how much our work in an Austin home decreases their sales from reduced system requirements.)
  • How long it will take to recover your investment (the truth about tax credits).
  • And much, much more!

Stellrr is not married to spray foam. We install blown cellulose, Rockwool batt insulation, and other insulation services. Each solution can have a good impact on your energy bills. Many insulation companies only do spray foam or fiberglass. So they only recommend the one they sell. We can get the same results with foam as we can with cellulose. It is about having the whole system installed adequately with quality products.

During your consult, we can compare some of the other options like:

1. 1. Installing an aluminum foil radiant barrier.
   2. Adding a layer of insulation on top of the existing.
   3. Removing existing traditional insulation materials. Re-blowing new insulation.
   4. Different types of spray foam systems. How to reduce air leakage with a thick layer of adequate insulation.
   5. Is foam worth the investment today to lower your carbon footprint?

Most Austin insulation installers make critical mistakes when...

Converting a house from fiberglass into a spray foam encapsulated system. Accidental malpractice is rampant.

Homeowners seldom know of the costly errors until it is too late...

• • Homeowners wind up sick with worse allergies and asthma than before.
  • Have expensive remediation repairs due to mold or accidentally killing their HVAC.
  • Pay serious dough for insulation without improving their comfort or energy bills!

You may have heard the news stories of spray foam insulation poorly done. Bad foam with harmful chemicals is easy to fix in a new build. There is easy access. But correcting a bad foam job with harmful chemicals in an existing home. It is much more expensive for the homeowner.

Stellrr Insulation specializes in converting existing homes into spray foam insulated homes. Most insulation contractors do 95% of new construction. It is simply following the blueprint. But with retrofit homes, we have to redesign everything. And we have to treat the home as a system to impact utility bills, comfort, and make the home healthy. There are...

13-Steps Essential For Success When Converting To Spray Foam Insulation.

I am shocked when I review competitor estimates! I rarely see more than 2-3 of the 13 steps included in the proposal. What does it mean? Other foam insulation installers are missing most of the steps for success. Their solution won't save money in the long run. Plus, it can make your home even more uncomfortable, moldy, and allergy-ridden.

What are the 13 essential steps for converting to spray foam insulation?

The 13 steps are a highly guarded secret. Competitors have plagiarized other solutions I shared. I don't worry that competitors would do the 13 steps. It is very difficult to implement. What worries me is they sound competent, which is very misleading.

When you have Stellrr do a home Diagnostic Consult, we will reveal the 13 steps for Success.

In some homes we do not have to preform each of the 13-steps. But we do have to address each one.

Respecting your home is very important to us. We  want to leave it better than we found it. Here are some of our precautions that others forget:

• Block soffit so it doesn’t spray out the soffit onto your siding ruining it.
• Protect the attic access so we don’t mist inside your house.
• Put down protection for your flooring so we don’t leave a trace.
• Block the gable vents, roof vents, ridge vents so foam does not spray onto your roof.
• Build walls to block the house attic off from the porch attic.
• Build walls to block the garage attic off from the house.
• Install sealed access doors to blocked off areas if access is needed.
• Seal down to the top plate on the house perimeter so it fully stops the air leakage.

Let’s talk more about moisture in the air. Austin is a very humid environment, often 80-90% humidity. This creates a great environment for all sorts of things to grow. If we are constantly bringing in humid air from outside, then we are creating a not so healthy environment inside. We need to seal up the house air leaks not only for energy savings & comfort. But we need to seal up the house for our health. Then we can manage the humidity more effectively. And we can stop mold growth, wood rot, and protect the house structurally. 

Check out my video on Fiberglass and Owens Corning. OC sells shingles. OC sells pink fiberglass. They do not want you to buy other products. They want the builder to buy their entire product line. And they trash foam. 

The truth about foam is that it does raise the shingle temperature about 5 degrees. But that is it. If shingles cannot handle 5 degrees more heat than we get in Austin, then they better not sell shingles in other parts of the country where it is 5 degrees warmer than Austin.  

Further, if the foam is “bad” for shingles, why is the owner of the Klaus Roofing franchise network spray-foaming the underside of his roof? I was recently visiting with Klaus Larson at an event and posed this same question to him. He agreed with my statements and shared that the roof on his new, very large home was being foamed as Stellrr does daily.

I foresee that this misinformation that has been spread since the 1980s will begin to change. Why is that? Owens Corning and Johns Manville (the 2 behemoths in roofing) just bought into the foam manufacturing business. I wonder if the old marketing department that trashed foam is still employed?

Does your attic has gas or propane combustion utilities like an HVAC or Water Heater (WH) that use your attic for make-up air to feed the combustion? If yes, then we will have a seperate line item for a Combustion Ventilation Closet for how we handle these items to create a sealed envelope while still bringing in the 1-for-1 make-up air exchange.  

If your HVAC or WH flue pipe through the roof is PVC plastic, that is because it is 95% efficient or greater. It means that the unit brings in combustion air through that PVC pipe, and has an inner layer where it exhausts out fumes. 

If you have a metal pipe going out your roof from the WH or HVAC, then you probably have an 80% efficient unit, meaning it requires attic make-up air. So we will have a seperate line item to build out a Combustion Air Closet. The closet will have a zip door on it so that the tech can come in, service the equipment and do any needed work. Then zip it back up upon leaving. 

Spray foam is a plastic based material and therefore has a lower smoke, and ignition point than do other materials like Rockwool (which is fireproof). 

According to International Residential Code (IRC), spray foam is to be coated with an ignition or thermal barrier under certain conditions. 

The spray polyurethane foam we install is Class 1 Fire rated which is the safest class. Commercial buildings require Class 1 Fire rating on materials. 

• What does the IRC code want and where?
• What is qualifies as a thermal or ignition barrier?
• Why didn’t Stellrr’s competitors notify me about this building code?
• Do I have to install an intumescent coating? What happens if I decline it?
• What are the alternatives to an intumescent coating?
• What about Appendix X foam that has some ignition barrier in it? Is that good enough?
• What if I wait to have the ignition barrier installed later?

The above questions are answered on the intumescent coating section here.

Great question. This is a common confusion. If done wrong it will cause mold. I done right, it will prevent mold. 

Where does this idea come from? Let’s take the mystery out of this cliche. An inefficent house has an HVAC unit sized for that leakage. Say, 1 ton of HVAC per 600 sq ft of home. But when you make the home more efficient, you can move toward 1 ton of HVAC per 800-900 sq ft of home. 

The HVAC unit manages the temperature AND THE MOISTURE in the air. 

As the HVAC unit runs longer, it removes more moisture from the air. If the home becomes more efficient with the same HVAC unit, it doesn’t run as much. It doesn’t pull as much moisture out of the home’s air. 

When your home’s air has more moisture in it, that will start to grow fungal stuff among other things. 

So if you make the home more efficient (or spray foam it), you then have to take equal meaasures to manage the humidity separate from the HVAC unit.

In every home that Stellrr converts to spray foam, we insist that the client also has us install a stand alone, whole home dehumidifier in the attic and/or crawlspace.

We install the SaniDry Sedona dehumidifier which adds some “load” back onto the HVAC unit, but it also manages the humidity.

But isn’t it better to just leave the house as it is without energy efficiency upgrades? Nope. Look, if your home is leaky right now, you cannot control the humidity right now either. 

Sure in the summer your home will have more regulated humidity, but in the mild months when the HVAC isn’t running much, you will have higher levels of humidity in the air.

So that is why it is best to have a SaniDry installed. It will manage the humidity in your home all year long. 

So the real solution is to: seal it tight, ventilate it right. 

Ideally we want the humidity in the home to hover around 50%, while 40%-60% is acceptable. Mold doesn’t start growing until you get closer to 80%+. But above 60% is where other things start to grow like: dust mites, viruses, and other things.

So the right answer to the question is this: any house, when not properly dehumidified can grow mold. A stand alone whole house dehumidifier should be installed in every central texas home regardless of it being spray foamed or not.