Spray foam insulation nightmare: What can happen if it's not installed correctly (CBC Marketplace)

this week on market plates you know what they've been exposed to insulation nightmares I think we've got what we need for the love it's a popular energy saver when it's installed properly it's really it's a bulletproof product it's gotta come out the phone's got to come out that could put you out of house and home you're playing kind of a game of Russian roulette with this and transform your life into a renovation Horror Story it's a scorching June day we're driving into the Caledon hills north of Toronto and into a nightmare the house of their dreams now haunted the owners living in a camper steps from the front door this is a refuge for Robert and Sonya Franceschini and their two kids I guess won't be along to her area right so you've got two young children are they asking lots of questions about why are we in here we try not to talk too much in front of them so they don't get worried or frightened what could be so frightening it's just 14 years old he says 3,000 square feet mortgage free but right now he couldn't sell it if he tried the reason there's something in the air okay the bedroom in oh yeah I guess milette oh yeah jeez it's pretty pretty strong yeah it's foul like bad fish smell the hotter it gets the the more more it smells right more it smells and if you stay in here long what happens well you'll see within the first five minutes you'll probably start getting a headache actually getting headache now wants to go I'm feeling something area yeah yeah it's quick it's insidious it's not just the bad smell that's made their home unlivable when I started feeling like excruciating pain joint pain in the knees and I had swelling in my legs and my feet and I just looked at Robert and I said Robert I think I need to go to the hospital they feel as if their house is attacking them the trouble started this spring they say just days after their attic was treated with spray foam insulation did you call the company and explain that you were having problems what and what do they do I brought him up to the bedroom where the main problem was and they said that they really couldn't smell anything and I was flabbergasted so what did you think when the company said we don't smell anything well I knew exactly where this was gonna go and this is why we're still here two months later you heard right on our visit they've been out of their home for two months when she has to go inside Sonia wears a mask we thought we were doing something to improve our home and instead they basically destroyed mine they prove it not the kind of testimonial the spray foam industry wants to hear over the past decade it's become the hottest trend in Canadian home insulation the industry is growing by 30 percent every year why the boom high heating costs government tax credits they introduce spray foam which I absolutely love and those home renault shows the spray-foam are those stars rely on sorry a camera or all the shows are so many aleck shits who started his own business when in high school I've been doing 22 years I live and breathe insulation it's good for the environment because we save burning on fossil fuels doesn't let drafts through when it's installed properly it's really it's a bulletproof product right when it's installed properly it's it's not simple you just don't pick up the gun it starts spring nope it's more like a science project right in your home the sprayer is mixing two sets of serious chemicals he's specially trained to handle the conditions have to be just right and the foam has to be sprayed in thin layers so it can cure allowing the chemicals to stabilize it's sophisticated stuff that promises an energy-efficient home and Alec should says it works that way almost every time there's a lot of foam being sprayed there's a lot of happy customers in fact the Frances keaney's were happy when they had a family property spray foam this past spring but after their attic job at home Sonia says not only did she feel ill she says her daughter broke out in rashes I'm afraid for the children and then you know what they've been exposed to and you know this is gonna be any long-term effects to what they've been exposed to it's just really upsetting fear stress uncertainty for two months time to fight out at this foam has taken possession of their home we call in Frank hammer key he's a certified indoor air quality specialist he's trying to figure out what chemicals might be floating around all right let's take a reading in the bedroom where we smell the odors he pulls out his computerized air detector and the small tins gather air samples for later so the all these samples are gonna stay here for 48 hours then we enter the belly of the beast if an addict can be a belly we just want to get a cutaway on the inside of the core closest to the bottom Frank also wants to test a foam sample I'm not wearing any nitrile gloves or any gloves because I don't want the chemicals from the nitrile affecting the sample I'm cutting could this be what's giving off bad fumes Tagus has a pretty good odor to it hmm that's fishy odor again right same smell from the bedroom I will read it we're right above the bedroom right here I think we've got what we need for the lab excellent great let's get out of this sauna I agree with you there is no graceful way to do this foam samples in hand Franck heads out and offers a few last-minute instructions to the family stay out of the bedroom just leave everything the way it is I'll be back in a couple days to pick it up the Frances keaney's may feel alone in this Horror Show we all felt burning like ammonia it turns out they're not we live with the nightmare still tales from the deep south reveal more foam invasions you're playing kind of a game of Russian roulette with this we're investigating a renovation Horror Story that our journey into the dark side of spray-foam has taken us south to the Sunshine State tonight action night exposes a growing threat where we've heard more reports of foam invasions my heart just started racing and racing and I was hyperventilating and fell to the ground I'm in Kissimmee Florida in Orlando suburb on the way to meet Joan and Mike Roth driven from their house by spray foam three years ago so your trailer was over here we are all felt burning like ammonia it was an awful experience get a sense of how deep this is their home video is now the Roth's personal horror flick it started when they spray foamed the Attic they wanted to cut their energy costs it was the cost of their health and home that blindsided them we say before the firemen have to Thomas changed our lives first the Installer and manufacturer claimed there were no problems then tried some repairs nothing worked so I actually got on the phone called remediation companies companies they take out asbestos and that type of thing deal with mold problems none of them had a protocol for spray foam nobody was going to touch it what the Roth's were learning is that the North American spray foam industry has no official guidelines for taking out a bad job so we said we're gonna have to pull the sheeting off the roof pull the whole thing off and have someone mechanically go in and scrape every piece of wood and every piece of drywall and take it and throw it away and how did that go what was it 16 days he'd haze it took and finally they they got 90 some percent of it out safely locked away in the garage mike is keeping some relics from their ordeal looks like candy smelly oh yeah yeah sort of a fishy smell there are other reminders that are far more upsetting their son Julian has suffered from asthma and joint pain ever since reacts to the chlorine in the pool but the Roth's say he was fine until the morning the spraying started when he was sleeping this is Julian's bedroom since where they sprayed first I'm still upset when I think about that crucial time when he was in the room when they were spraying right over his bedroom makes me sick makes me sick to think about in fact the whole family was inside that day they didn't say anything about leaving the house and here they are spraying these chemicals up there and we're still in the house health issues smelly foam living in a trailer the Ross story is eerily similar to our Canadian case as spray foams popularity has spread so have more troubling stories you're playing kind of a game of Russian roulette with this Bernie Blum is a kind of foam buster that matter if you did it right 20 times in a row the 21st home might be different people such as Bernie are in demand across the u.s. they're expert advisors for a number of class-action lawsuits currently underway a leading indoor air scientist for 40 years he's involved with dozens of bad spray-foam issues six of them here in Florida we have more and more houses being sprayed I expect those wing more not fewer problems the man who helped design ventilation systems for the International Space Station believe spray foam is a formula for trouble the foam itself is manufactured in the house not in the factory if you spray it too thick and it gets too hot then the reactions that happen and not what was designed in the factory or in the laboratory you got a runaway reaction so that fishy smell Bernie says it means the chemicals in the foam weren't mixed right and didn't stabilize when it works at thus fine when it doesn't work and if you're in the house you can be chemically sensitized which is a dreadful condition Bernie's not a doctor but experience tells him that's what happened to the Roth's why would they be there or why they told the leak if you tell somebody we're gonna spray this stuff it's great stuff but we want you not to be in the house for there too which is conventional industry internal guidance some people get asked why is this something wrong is it toxic the day their attic was sprayed in Caledon the Frances keaney's weren't worried about the foam because they say they didn't know about staying out of the house most of the time we were out here while they were spraying them if we needed something we'd run in the house get it and the salesman was here he may have mentioned it I don't recall but out of all the pamphlets or all the paperwork I got or all my quotes nothing in there that says that I should have stayed out of the house because that that would have stuck in my head and here's their job quote nothing about staying out of the house nothing in the company brochures either meantime it's been more than three months since they've had a family meal in their dining room or kitchen can it really be that bad in the house so long after the job was done oh yeah still there that's still a fishy smell it's still off yet yeah we'll turn that fan on ventilate the whole house open all the windows and shut it down and it's right back remember we tested the bad air in the master bedroom and the foam above it now Frank hammer kate is back with some unsettling results the air samples reveal a laundry list of chemicals in a nutshell you've got some toluene issues you've got em ek issues some of those things can be linked to cancer ethylbenzene Frank believes the spray foam jobs to blame but can't conclusively prove it now for the full results one of the surprising things as we found from Aldo now formaldehyde we're surprised the manufacturer of the Franceschini z' foam says their insulation doesn't contain formaldehyde or similar compounds again the low levels but it really shouldn't be there Frank thinks it's the installation job gone wrong creating new dangerous chemicals what do you think about what you're hearing really needless to say it's it's scary you scared yes very much so so what's your advice to them are you gonna have to get the product removed desperate times desperate measures you can only stand each other for so long you're about to see one extreme makeover the Frances keaney's are tired of trailer living tired of being spooked by the spray foam in their attic I'm still in disbelief I can't believe that somebody would do this to a family and not one take ownership book before what they did we need to get back into my house and they're tired of searching for answers the phone manufacturer had the air and the foam tested and said its product wasn't causing problems then an independent group determined a section of foam was too thick and emitting chemicals manufacturer eventually agreed the family has heard enough it's gotta come out the phone's got to come out it's got to come right out removing bad foam is what alec shits is up to today boiling this side some on this side as well it's it's the middle section that's the worst the stuff his man sprayed isn't making anyone sick and it doesn't stink but it's cracking and peeling never see that this thick though this is the worst I've ever seen Tom so okay it's terrible yes TV's most famous spray foam err doesn't always get it right and the industry agrees not every job is perfect I hate the fact that it's happening but we're here that we're here to fix it doesn't cost a customer any money how common is it for installers to have to take out phone it's rare it's some it's happening more now than it would buy probably in the past because there's a lot more of newer contractors out there in your view then if an installer gets it wrong are they obliged to fix it damn right yeah yeah if you if you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing fix it so we're hitting the road to Huntsville Ontario to talk to the company that's spray foam the Franceschini Zadok a family business called thermo seal insulation Richard Clement is the owner what do we have here so this is the chemical to chemicals go together if it's not sprayed them correctly it certainly could be a problem he's been in the business for decades figures the company's done about 15,000 spray foam jobs and says it's their first case like this I was in the bedroom like that master bedroom upstairs that's where I got that smell that did your folks go up there when they first visited the house or when they went there and couldn't they couldn't detect it I should qualify that that they did smell but it's the smell that they are accustomed to with with a fresh application of polyurethane foam but they didn't detect a fishy smell as the homeowner did Richard says Consultants told him only about 1% of the foam was bad so why didn't your company take out that foam we offered to take out that phone the homeowner decided that he wanted to have the entire attic area thirteen or fourteen hundred square feet removed and that in our opinion and every other profession most opinion was unrealistic and unwarranted given that the wife got sick days after it happened can you understand what they probably want to get rid of it and get it out of their house we're sorry that the folks got sick but we don't feel that it's necessarily anything to do with what the phone he also disagrees with the family's claim they weren't warned about staying out of the house there are guidelines that say in a residence the family shouldn't be in the house for 24 hours he was told that he was told that by three different people from our company is there a reason it's not on the the quote or the contract and like that but since that incident we have put it in writing here's thermo seals new contract by signing the homeowner acknowledges I have been informed of the health hazards and I am not to occupy my residence for a period of one day 24 hours after spray foam is installed spray foam is popular but Clemens suggests it's not always the best insulation choice you try to talk people out of it yes we do so maybe people are using it too much in their houses and some of the places where we're working it's become the standard and there are I think I think there are better applications out there so if you are thinking of insulating learn the risks and benefits of all kinds of insulation if you pick spray foam make sure the installer is certified and experienced get a guarantee of foam removal in writing in case things go wrong and stay away for at least a day as for the Frances keaney's the disturbing tale of the house in the Caledon Hills has reached the end of the road are they still in the trailer I've got some relief problem solved time to find out well you can come in and have a look yeah look up there this whole roof was removed they've actually blown the lid off their home only way to remove the phone for safety reasons was to remove the whole roof this renovation horror story ends with a domestic decapitation they take it off basically all in one piece yeah the ceiling is still underneath well we can see from the front ok sound like it just like the skeleton in a way variously it's finally it's not pounding you thank God that it's out of my house and we don't have to breathe any of this anymore after this long nightmare and it's dramatic end robert francis keaney is waking up to a new realization he has to think about insulation again and i'll have to be honest with you I haven't gotten to that stage yet on on what to do I guess gonna be really stupid to try to respray foam so you

Channel: CBC News

Views: 5,784,668

Rating: 4.2350197 out of 5

Keywords: Spray Foams, Home Improvement (Interest), insulation, off gassing, energy efficiency, cbc marketplace

Id: 0Hh5MYv7lWc

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 10 2014