Earlier this week, I spent some time at EcoBuild. At meetings like this, I always seek to spend time wandering the exhibition hall, never knowing what ‘cool technology’ will be there, what information to learn, what interesting people to meet. These are hours spent valuably, learning and exchanging thoughts. While there was much interesting there, there was a quite incongruous moment when at the Foametix booth.
Now, spray foam insulation is something of interest, both in regret that I don’t have spray foam in my home and in believing that it is one of those simple technologies that, if deployed and used more widely, could enable us (the US) to achieve great improvements in energy effiicency in our buildings at relatively low cost. Thus, consider me an enthusiast. And, Foametix claims to be a ‘green’ variant.
Okay, at a booth of a “green” insulating product at a ‘green’ trade show, this was not the expected commentary from one of the Foametix representatives.
This can save so much energy that we’d easily be able to cut the natural gas used to generate electricity and heat homes. That natural gas could then be used to power cars and we’d make all those windmills across Texas unnecessary.
While this is not a verbatim quote (hard to take notes while pulling one’s jaw off the ground), attacking wind mills while saying good things about coal-fired electricity (other words, about how “coal can provide the electricity”) isn’t what we expect to hear from ‘green’ product representatives speaking at a ‘green’ trade show.
What’s frustrating out of this? That the Foametix product looks like it could be of real interest due in part its green credentials but it is hard to get past a “I can’t believe my ears” moment which manages to make the competition look better.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Foam Roofing // Apr 5, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I agree so much that SPF foam could be one of the answers our country is looking for, which could make the entire nation more energy efficient. As you said, if it was more widespread there would be more potential for big improvements.
As far as the interiors of homes are concerned (internal SPF foam insulation), there are no limitations.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for polyurethane foam roofing. Places like florida, texas, and california provide an excellent environment for foam roof application.
There are companies like Dura-Foam (bay area california foam roofing contractor), which have been applying foam roof systems to homes with excellent results for many years (29 years for this company).
This leads to a primary point I’m making here. Homes with foam roofing can easily cut their energy bill by 50% or more depending on circumstances. And the reflective coatings counter-act the urban heat island effect. This is all aside from the fact that closed cell foam is an exceptional waterproofing agent as well.
Hopefully one day technology will advance and allow the rest of the country to access some of the great benefits of foam roofing insulation.
You can view the foam roofing installation process here: Foam Roof Installation
2 Gail // May 14, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Spray foam does make a huge difference. My husband I and just put it in our home and we can’t believe the savings. We had a hard time finding local spray foam contractors at first but then we came across this website XXX and we were able to connect with local contractors immediately.