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Old 04-26-12, 07:12 AM   #21
gasstingy
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Went back and edited posts #12 & #13 to put in a couple of pictures. The old SD card is dead, but I had a different small capacity card that I used to transfer pictures after we got home from church last night. No actual progress to report.

Like most everyone else, there's not enough hours in the day to accomplish all I'd like to. If you occasionally look in on our garage / workshop build, you know it's going painfully slow, too. Until this project is finished, next to nothing happens on that project.

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Old 05-01-12, 07:22 AM   #22
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I have a bit more work done under the house, so I thought I'd post a few pictures. The barometer is to show what I'm up against. If you can read it, you'll see its around 80% relative humidity. After I was working a few minutes with a big fan on, it went to about 90%.
The second and third pictures are me rolling insulation up to get rid of it. I found that by staggering the strips of insulation when I laid them out before rolling, it would leave only a little fiberglass showing when I taped the ends up. I took the rolls and stuffed them in 30 gallon contractor bags and threw them out. 29 bags of wasted money when we built the house. It would have been nice to known a bit more before we built it this way. Oh well, life goes on.....
The under floor shot shows some of what I have to clean up. On a couple of joists, if you look close you see a light "dusting" an off-white to green color. Mold, of course. The darker streaks a couple joists farther back are the more worrisome parts. All of these are on my to-do list to clean with hydrogen peroxide before the spray foam guy shows up.
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Old 05-03-12, 07:39 AM   #23
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We're ready for getting foamed! It was almost 11 pm when I finally came out from under the house feeling a sense of accomplishment last night. I used 3% hydrogen peroxide, straight out of the bottle to remove the mold from the floor joists, and added a little distilled vinegar until I ran out of the vinegar near the end. {I got that recipe for mold removal from a Google search.} I did some by soaking a rag and wiping it, some by using a spray bottle to apply it and then wiping it. It looked a little better as soon as I finished wiping, but it is amazing the improvement you can see the next day.

My foam contractor will either be out this afternoon or tomorrow, which explains the late hour last night. Will post my impression of his work and maybe a couple of pictures when he's done.
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Old 05-03-12, 08:05 AM   #24
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I'd watch and definitely inspect his work after the fact. It seems to be incredibly common to have issues with not enough insulation being sprayed (or blown). I think Ryland had an issue with a spray foam contractor. A coworker of mine had issues when he built his house as well. He specifically said he was going to inspect it afterwards and they still blew his attic pretty short in places. They ended up having to come back and blow more in loosing any money they probably would have made on the job.
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Old 05-03-12, 08:38 AM   #25
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Count on me inspecting before paying, and the contractor knows this.

The guy who sprayed the garage / workshop project {different contractor} missed the cavities over the door and windows because they only sprayed while standing on the floor and you had to spray downwards to get those places. Because he sprayed more than I paid for in a lot of places though, I ignored it and used several cans of spray foam to make up for it.

I don't intend to go behind and try to foam any gaps under the house though. Further, I don't know if "Great Stuff" is open or closed cell foam. Since open cell allows moisture to pass, it is absolutely unacceptable in a crawlspace environment and I won't chance that.

Last edited by gasstingy; 05-03-12 at 12:57 PM.. Reason: Clear up a point on spray can foam
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Old 05-03-12, 12:09 PM   #26
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I thought Great Stuff was closed cell, thanks for the correction.

EDIT/ADD: http://building.dow.com/na/en/produc...windowdoor.htm
Great Stuff Windows & Doors is closed cell as well as most, if not all, of their products.

Last edited by MN Renovator; 05-03-12 at 05:54 PM..
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Old 05-03-12, 12:52 PM   #27
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Oops, I did not mean to infer that I knew it was open cell foam. I do not know one way or the other, I am just not willing to chance it. I'm editing the post to make that clear, thanks for pointing this out.

This is what I {think I} know. When the foam guys came out to spray the garage / workshop project walls {just the downstairs part has been foamed so far}, I asked them how I could tell that they were spraying the closed cell foam I was paying for, besides me looking at the barrel the hoses were connected to. I like his answer. He took a piece of trimmed foam {it was a different color from what he sprayed for me}, handed it to me saying it was open cell foam. The open and closed cell distinction is the amount and size of any air pockets in the foam. He asked me to mash on it, or squeeze it. I did and found it fairly soft/pliable. Then he asked me to mash or squeeze the foam he sprayed on my walls. They had already trimmed a couple of places that were too deep for the 2x6 cavity and I found that piece was more firm than the one he gave me at first.

That said, the areas I used Great Stuff to fill in over the windows and side door felt like open cell foam to me. There are several varieties of Great Stuff in stores. One said "big gap filler" while another says "minimal expansion." AFAIK, they don't say open or closed cell on the can, but if they did, I missed it when I read the label.
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Old 05-03-12, 03:53 PM   #28
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Great Stuff is next to solid and its outside is goo so if it is open-cell, the outside forms a barrier unless you trim it after it has been curing. I've used this other stuff that was water soluable, DAP in the blue can and it is softer and more fragile and I thought that stuff was open cell. It has a warning not to trim it after it dries, so I 'machine tooled' it with my finger after I sprayed it in place but it still has that 'surface film' to it but it cracked over the few weeks before I put the window trim back on.

If you squeeze Great Stuff once it is cured it is squishy and seems to try to spring back to its previous position as long as you don't mash it too much. Probably 90% spring back from a 50% squeeze on a 1" glob.

EDIT/ADD: http://building.dow.com/na/en/produc...windowdoor.htm
They say Great Stuff Windows & Doors is closed cell. It's what I used, as well as a different no-warp less expanding stuff in a purple container that was a white foam but just as stiff once cured but I haven't found that one for sale in a few years. I used fireblock which is also closed-cell. Big gap is closed cell(never used it though, haven't had a use)

Last edited by MN Renovator; 05-03-12 at 05:53 PM..
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Old 05-07-12, 07:16 AM   #29
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They sprayed it Thursday afternoon, but getting pictures was out of the question at that time. The fog of foam hadn't settled down for several hours. I did go back and take a few pictures this weekend. They did a pretty thorough job, covering almost everything that looked like wood. {They even foamed around a few block penetrations where pipes came through.} There are a few spots that do not look to have been sprayed 2" thick under the floor and many that look more than 2". I also noted that since this foam came out ~ white, the light travels better under there. Of course, any wiring tacked to the floor joists got foamed as did a good deal of cpvc piping.

We also have two junction boxes with duplex receptacles and another with a light switch. They foamed all that. They did clean off the light switch when they were done, and since there were extension cords plugged into both sides of one duplex receptacle, it survived intact. The other one......, well that's picture three after I scraped some of the foam off the lower part of the receptacle. I decided it wasn't worth the effort since the foam went down into the openings, so I scraped off the foam enough to replace the receptacle. This time I put a cover on it. I hadn't bothered with a cover the first time. The light switch and other receptacle box had covers on them all along.

All in all, we are pleased. The floor joists were clean and looked new from being wiped down with peroxide before they sprayed and this foam job should provide many years of protection against moisture. I still need to finish doing the vapor barrier. Not what I'd call a fun task, but at least I have most of the material to do the job and while I'm doing that I'll start saving money for the next project.
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Old 05-08-12, 12:08 PM   #30
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Well, looks like I'll be taking my barometer from under the house and putting it in the attic for a few days to watch the humidity range up there.

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