Insulating your home with spray foam looks like an easy DIY task. However, hiring a local spray foam insulation contractor ensures your home is energy efficient. Without the relevant training and experience, you’ll likely waste the spray foam. Professionals know the insulation for your home and how to use it well.
If you choose to DIY at foam insulation, you must know the available types. You can select closed cell spray foam and open cell spray foam for use at home spray insulation. The best at home spray foam insulation kit is the closed-cell spray. It’s durable and provides an effective barrier against vapor. It’s also more expensive than the other at home spray foam insulation kits.
When choosing an at home spray foam insulation contractor, consider their experience. Your contractor should have at least ten years in the insulation industry. They will offer professional advice and perform their task excellently when insulating your house. The more skilled they are, the more you’ll have to pay. However, you’ll get value for your money. Besides the price, you also need to know if you can contact them for any repairs. Also, ensure any extra work is at their cost.
Home insulation is an essential part of the construction and choosing sustainable insulation materials can mean a huge difference in your overall energy efficiency and utility bills.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star Program estimates that adding insulation and properly sealing air leaks, monthly energy bills could be slashed by up to 20%.
There are different types of thermal building insulation materials including fiberglass, cellulose, thermoplastic form and spray foam chemicals, which is one of the newer additions that are becoming increasingly popular. Spray foam insulation is one of the sustainable construction materials and they provide high insulating capacity against thermal heat transfer. Suited ideally for unfinished walls, floors, and ceilings, this insulation material performs much better than conventional building insulation like fiberglass.
Considerations Before Buying or Building a Spray Foam Rig
If you are thinking of starting a spray foam insulation rental service, there are two ways to go about it. You either look for spray foam rigs for sale or build-out a custom spray foam insulation rig. Whatever option you choose, it’s important to understand how to properly customize and equip your trailer for improved efficiency.
To begin with, you should start by determining the application of the rig and what type of insulation material you’ll be spraying. Are you looking to offer large scale insulation for commercial and industrial use? Or your immediate focus is the residential or commercial roof and wall insulation? This will help you choose the right tools and equipment for a complete spray foam rig.
1. Foam Rig Power Source
For a spray foam equipment to work, you need a reliable power source that can efficiently run your compressor, generator, lights and proportioner equipment. The most common power source options include electric units, generators, gas and diesel compressor. However, determining the load and wattage requirements of your equipment will help you understand the amount of power required and the type of power source to choose.
While it’s not recommended to invest in high capacity equipment if you’re only going to underuse it, choosing a high output electrical source can ensure you have sufficient power that can accommodate electric loads of the spray foam rig equipment.
2. Determine Your Generator Size
When looking for spray foam rigs for sale, it’s vital to determine the capacity of the generator if you’ve chosen it as the main source of power. But how do you pick the right size generator? First, start by listing all the system components of your spray foam rig and calculate their peak loads in watts. Sum up the components load requirements and multiplying the results by 1.25 to get the kilovolt amperes (kVA). This will help you choose the right generator capacity with equal or higher than the determined kVA. Remember to use the appropriate proportioner power cords that can accommodate the kVA requirement to avoid power surging and equipment failure.
3. Trailer Configurations
The next step when looking for spray foam rigs for sale or customizing your own is to determine the right type of rig for your specific needs. You can choose between the two commonly used options which are standard trailers and the gooseneck-style trailer, which can only be pulled by a truck designed to support a fifth wheel. However, despite gooseneck trailers been designed to carry heavy freight they have limited maneuverability in tight spaces.
Choose a rig with fitted with strong frames and axles to accommodate heavy loads for safe transportation, particularly on off-road terrains. Remember that the gross truck weight ratings will determine if the trailer is safe to be pulled. Trailer door configuration is yet another key factor to consider when building or looking for spray foam rigs for sale. Options include barn-style and ramp-style doors. The barn-style door will help load spray foam equipment easily with a forklift and they can also be used in tight spaces.
Ramp-style doors, on the other hand, are effective in handling material drum especially if you don’t have a forklift and they allow faster loading time since they don’t have the step up. Barn-style doors are ideal to use with a forklift, but if currently you only load manually, then the ramp-style door is the best option.
