Though Jeff and I are in the throes of a nasty cold, we were able to have our entrance wall “foamed in”. Our North wall is framed in front of the concrete shell structure. Because of the possibility of condensation, we need to eliminate any airspace in that wall. Closed-cell foam seamed like the best option. The area of the wall adjacent to interior living space also gains from the super insulative quality of the foam. However the wall cavity needed to be dry before we filled it in. The last week has been uncommonly dry and with a long rainy season ahead of us, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take advantage of this dry spell.
We contacted Rex and his wife Dianne from Rigby Marine about doing the job. They had not done any residential foaming but agreed to take this project on. They mostly work on fishing boats insulating their holds and other parts of the boats with structural closed-cell foam. This foam is actually a higher quality foam than is used in the residential foaming industry.
Since we have had to move our custom made steel entry door somewhat down on our financial priority list, this door will have to serve us for a while. I figured we might as well insulate it. In the picture above, you can see our “temporary” door laid out with foam board taped over the windows.
When the foam set up (which took just minutes) I removed the foam blocking to reveal the windows. We now have a well insulated door that looks kind of cool too.
I have painted it white to protected the foam from UV light.
It’s our “StayPuff Marshmallow Door”
In fact, we briefly thought about leaving the bumpy foam surface on the exterior wall and painting some kind of protective coating on it. Then it would have a rather neat organic look about it. But I think we will keep with the plan. That is to shave it flat, put sheeting (plywood) up and cover the wall with corrugated metal. Tell us what you think!
Oh, Back to the Icing title of this entry. We just had a bit of a snow storm.
Progress on the inside will probably be fairly slow through the winter as it is cold and damp in there now. Plus we need to save up for the very expensive waterproofing material.