Foam Insulation - Insulating this old house

I'm looking forward to my next home improvement project - insulating this old house. A buddy of mine told me that he had had foam insulation injected into the walls of his home. After hearing about his experience and checking out the video, I was sold. This seems like the perfect answer for older homes. I have zero insulation in my walls. I learned that most building codes did not require insulation until the early 1970s. My house was built in the 1950s. I've replaced all the windows and doors and had a new furnace installed. I also had the attic/crawlspace insulated. The last link in the "let's make our house comfortable" project is insulating the walls.

If you've watched the video you can see how the contractor injects foam into your walls from the exterior of the house. It appears that they can do this no matter what the exterior of your house. My house has vinyl siding which makes their job easier. They remove a little siding, drill a hole in the house, pump in the foam insulation, patch the hole and replace the siding. Piece of cake!

One advantage of the foam insulation is that it can flow around any obstructions in your wall cavities like electrical wires and pipes. Even after the foam hardens, you can still access the wires and the pipes. Because the foam insulation flows around such obstructions, it is more likely to fill all the gaps that allow for air infiltration.

Another advantage of the foam insulation is it insulates against noise as well. The contractor claims up to an 80% noise reduction. I noticed a big difference in exterior noise reduction after installing new windows and doors. The foam insulation should reduce exterior noise quite a bit as well.

The contractor also claims a 40-50% reduction in utility bills after installation of the foam insulation. I'll be happy with a 1/3 reduction, but I'll take more. This should be one home improvement investment that visibly pays for itself over time. And with energy prices increasing, the payoff will only happen faster.

I hope the foam insulation lives up to its billing. I'm really excited to run around in shorts and a t-shirt all winter. Installation occurs shortly and I'll report back with pictures and my findings.

Removal of vinyl siding and drilling holes

One correction is that after the contractor had removed the siding and drilled holes into the old cedar siding, I discovered that I actually did have some insulation. The contractor estimated that it was probably an R-10 insulation. You would think that with the R-10, cedar siding, foam board and vinyl siding I'd be pretty well protected against drafts but that was not the case.

The contractor does not inject the foam insulation immediately above windows and doors as most of that space is taken up by headers. As far as avoiding electrical and other wiring, the contractor tries to drill midway up the wall to do so.

Foam insulation injected into wall cavity

The hard part is drilling all the holes at about shoulder height. The guy who had that job must have been sore for a few days after this project. Here you can see that they have filled the wall cavities with the foam insulation product. This type of foam insulation barely expands and doesn't pose a risk to your walls.

Preparing south side of house for foam insulation

Here they are working on the south side of my home. The contractors took about an afternoon to do the job. I only had one spot in the house where I noticed some of the foam had worked its way through to the inside. Overall, the contractors did a great job and cleaned up pretty good as well. It's been about a month since they finished and here are my initial observations:

1. I've checked several of my electrical outlets and light switches and haven't noticed a draft from them. This should be a good indicator of how tight the house is.
2. I'm still waiting to get my first gas bill to see how usage compares to the last couple years after having this done.

Plugging the holes

They plugged the holes with wood plugs and in this area (since there was no vinyl siding here) covered the wood plugs with the white insulating foam.

Observations continued:

3. My wife says that the house feels much more comfortable than it used to and she's been using her space heaters much less. She's generally always cold and used to have a space heater with her in whatever room she was in. Now there's a lot less of that.