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Old 11-19-11, 01:20 PM   #23
S-F
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MN Renovator View Post
If you can get it all out of the tanks through a summer heat soak and shaking the tanks then I suppose my concern about it doesn't really exist so much.
I'm not exactly clear on your meaning here. Even in the summer I would still heat them for several days. What might work is to heat them at night and in the day keep them in a closed up car parked in the sun. I can't stress enough how difficult and important it is to heat these things thoroughly enough. Especially the larger kits. Most people don't use the larger kits. They just hire the work out to a spray foam company. I haven't priced the difference so I can't comment there. Most people build a box out of polyiso that can fit a 200' kit and put a bulb in there with a cheap domestic thermostat to keep the inside around 90° f. Set it in there and forget about it for a day or two. Then even in the dead of winter the tanks won't cool down before you use all the foam. I did this to an completely unconditioned rim joist last February. The space wasn't finished yet to there literally was 5° wind blowing on me the whole time. I got all of it out no problem.
Really these kits are over rated. It's extremely difficult to get the mix correct, even for people with $80K gear. There are glimmers of studies emerging showing that most 2 part foam installations aren't done correctly. In the lab I guess it's easier. If the mix isn't right you can get all kinds of issues, including but not limited to: foam that is hard and brittle, foam that will decompose and outgas, foam that is soupy and so on. The studies I have heard of are all based on the safety of the finished product as far as outgassing is concerned, not aout it's performance.
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