colerdotcom

I use the soy based spray foam every working day. It is a great product which has a higher soy content than some of the competitive soy or bio content spray foams. As stated, the Polyol makes up 20-30% of the of the total spray foam raw materials and BioBased polyols are 97% pure. You do the math and I have yet to see a bio content material match or exceed this. This blows the government requirements of 7% minimum out of the water.

As far as competing with food sources, yes, Soy beans do, but soy has also been the number one exported agricultural product from the US for many years. Soy crops are also good because you can commonly get two crops within one growing season year. The soy availability has been hurt by the latest trend of farmers to grow corn because of the prooted demand for use to create ethanol. So, with a high availability of soy beans, the oil can be used for many purposes, and the soy pulp can be used for food or other as needed.

Flash-n-Batt: Some installers are using a 1/8"-1" thick layer of foam to seal the building and then putting fiberglass in the cavities. Our company does not supprot this practice and will refuse a project that has this specified. It goes against good building science principles where the foam does not block enough heta transfer to prevent condensation within the walls. We have heard from some prospective customers who chose to go this route and found water in their walls behind the fiberglass. The more cost effective route is using open cell foam at 3" or more in walls.

JFink, the product available at HomeDepot is SoySeal and it sounds like it was either cold or not shaken when you used it. There are materials inside that need to be properly mixed and at the proper temperature to make "good foam". We use the SoySeal products and they work great. We've found them to have a better end product than the great stuff products by Dow.

Airkrete is different from spray foams as it is more brittle once it sets up and the expansion and contraction of wood with moisture and temperature variations can cause it to crack or crumble within the cavities. It also commonly oozes into the electrical lboxes and can fill them if not carefull during the install.Spray foams are more flexible and more durable in the long run.

So, Yes, foam uses some petroleum to create the insulation materials in our buildings, but when you look at the overall life savings of petroleum it nets, the amount of oil used is minimal. A 2400 sqft house insulated with BioBased Insulations will use less than 175 gallons of petroleum based products. This is over 85 gallons less than a 100% petrolem based spray foam. Many houses we've worked in use more than this in one month of heating their home. In many of these same homes, we're seeing a 30-50% decrease in energy consumption. So, this is a savings of fuel oil at about 50 gallons per month and this continnues for the life of the building.

So, if you're still not in agreement, then look at the alternatives and the energy usage consumed to melt sand into glass and then melt glass and use massive amounts of electricity to compress air which is used ot blow the molten glass into fibers. There are HUGE amounts of energy used in the creation of fiberglass and it doesn't save what they claim it does as air passes right through it. It's the same material used in most furnace filters - only thicker so how can we expect it to perform differently?

DIY kits of spray foam are typically only a closed cell foam of a 1.7-2.0 lb/cuft density. These are typically much more expensive than even an installed price of a professional contractor using larger professional equipment. It's not easy to install properly and it's best left to someone who does it as their profession to make sure you are getting your best return on the investment. I've used the DIY kits and even sell them. They are very useful in small areas of repair or small applications, but larger areas are typically more cost effective with a professional's services (which includes install time and labor, and safety equipment).

Spray foam is the insulation product of the future and I believe it will completely replace the use of fiberglass insulation, once people understand how it works and they see/feel the benefits!