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Insulation For Your New Home...
You Have To Pick One!

Icynene® Foam Insulation    Fiberglass Batt A     Fiberglass Batt B             


Here's the dilemma.  
These insulations are all rated R-13. 
Two of them cost less initially than the third. 

But the cheaper ones are made with glass fibers, 
which aren't particularly good insulators 
and are even worse at stopping air infiltration.  
Which means that wind and cold air and pollen and dust and humidity 
will leak around the fiberglass strands and go through them...
right into your house.  

These days, with home energy costs up so dramatically, 
the smart choice is no longer the cheapest insulation you can buy...
but the best insulation you can buy.  
Which also just happens to be the only one
that can stop your heated or cooled air from leaking away so easily...
Icynene® Foam Insulation.

   In this era of rising energy costs, choosing the best insulation for a new home is more important than ever. But it hasn't always been that way.  In fact, insulation only became a code requirement in the 1960's, and for some years thereafter, builders and home purchasers alike scoffed at the idea of spending money on insulation.  After all, natural gas and heating oil were cheap...and plentiful.  Therefore, the insulation they were forced to install had to be, too.

   In the early years, there weren't many insulation choices, and the prospective homeowner's biggest decision was whether they wanted pink fiberglass or some other color.  Fiberglass batts had major shortcomings, and never did work very well, but they didn't cost very much and they initially won the insulation battle by default.  One competitor, cellulose insulation (finely ground  newspaper) was introduced, but it proved to make the house terribly dusty, it settled badly, and was a disaster when it got wet.  An early urea formaldehyde foam, introduced in the early 1970's, performed quite well in commercial applications, but proved to be unsatisfactory for residential applications.  And so the fiberglass dynasty continued basically unchanged until recent years.

   Fortunately, there has been one major breakthrough in insulation technology.  In the late 1980's, a small Canadian company, Icynene Incorporated, introduced a unique low density spray foam insulation perfectly suited for residential applications. The new  foam, with the scientific name Polyicynene, is an environmentally friendly foam in the same chemical family as pillow foam and upholstery foam.  It contains no formaldehyde, it is long lasting, and has no emissions problems.  The foam is formed by carbon dioxide bubbles, the same as in soda water or seltzer water, and Icynene® requires no ozone-destroying gasses like freon to form its bubbles.  Icynene® can be sprayed in place, where it expands quickly to custom fit every stud cavity (see photo below), and solve

 

Here's a peek behind the drywall to see the tight fit of Icynene® in a wall.

the "fit problem" so common with fiberglass batts.  It provides a barrier against air infiltration, and a 3 1/2" sample of Icynene® is nearly 24 times less permeable to air infiltration than a similar thickness of fiberglass insulation, even if the batt were fitted perfectly.  Which means that a cold wind can't infiltrate into your Icynene® insulated house at will...and the conditioned air you paid so dearly to heat or cool can't leak back out.  And your house will operate significantly more efficiently (typically 30 - 50%) than a house insulated with fiberglass.  See the financial analysis we've included in the section "Let's Talk Money!"

Key Benefits of The Icynene Insulation System®:

bulletEnergy Conservation: Typically 30%-50% more efficient than homes insulated with fiberglass batts.
bulletMore Comfort:  Warmer walls and floors and fewer cold drafts. 
bulletCleaner: Airborne pollen & dust are less likely to leak into your home, and the foam contributes no glass fibers or ground newspaper dust into your indoor environment.
bulletQuieter:  Foam is a popular sound conditioner for bathrooms, bedrooms and home theaters.  In fact, most of our customers tell us their home insulated with Icynene® is the quietest home they've ever owned.
bulletHealthier:  Families who suffer with allergies, asthma, and chemical sensitivities are creating homes with healthier indoor air quality with Icynene®  They start by achieving a tight building envelope with sprayed foam (you can't build a healthy house if you can't control what leaks into or out of the house). Then they choose building products throughout the home that contribute no (or very little) off-gassing of chemicals, or Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's).  Finally, they provide for a constant, low volume air exchange to provide fresh, filtered, and even dehumidified air, depending on their health issues.  We can help you find experts in healthy home construction if necessary.  In addition, the American Lung Association is developing a series of Health Home prototypes across the U.S. to demonstrate methods for building healthier homes.  You may wish to contact the ALA for further information.

Insulating Walls with The Icynene Insulation System®:

Icynene® foam makes a tight, well insulated wall...
even those hard to fit areas over the windows.

Insulating Ceilings with Icynene® Sprayed Foam:

They say more energy loss occurs through the attic than any other area of a house...
but not through an attic that has a thin seal coat of Icynene® foam insulation installed.

   In areas with long hot summers like Maryland & Virginia, keeping summer heat from penetrating into the house during the long air conditioning season is as important as stopping air from leaking out each winter. In every season of the year...The Icynene Insulation System® makes "cents!"

Garage Ceilings, Crawl Spaces & Overhangs...
Make Them Barefoot Warm with Icynene® Sprayed Foam: 

Icynene® foam is sprayed directly to the plywood subfloor 
to insulate garage ceilings, crawl spaces and overhangs.

   Because Icynene® seals the subfloor, cold air can't get to it, so the floor is warm, not cold!  Fiberglass batts can't possibly perform as well, since the batts settle away from the very area they are supposed to protect.  In its place...COLD AIR!  If you want warm floors in these traditionally "impossible to insulate" areas, use The Icynene Insulation System®.

We're So Proud...
Here's What The People We Consider to be Housing Experts 
Are Saying About Icynene®!

Twenty years...and Icynene® is among "The Best of This Old House".

   The staff of this popular PBS television program, on the occasion of their twentieth anniversary of the television broadcast, wrote about "The Best of This Old House" from the first 20 years on the program.  Among their favorites, they listed their five favorite building products from twenty years of the broadcast.  One of the five was The Icynene Insulation System®, which has been used for seven projects on the program... an unprecedented achievement.  And here are just two of their comments about it:

   "Move over fiberglass...here comes Icynene®."

   "...so good that no one on the program could imagine building a house without it."

   "When you think of all the products introduced on "This Old House" over the past twenty years, it's an amazing tribute to any building product to be named one of their five favorites.  Still, I'm not surprised...
Icynene® is that good!" 
Ken Grunst, President of Foam InSEALators of Maryland & Virginia

Tom Silva and family practice what they preach about The Icynene Insulation System®.
   Here, Tom tells Ken Grunst, Owner of Foam InSEALators of Maryland & Virginia
 about the installation of Icynene® in his brother Dick's house, 
when it was rebuilt as a featured project on "This Old House."  
"They love it," Tom reports.   We're not surprised.

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