Why I Hate Spray Foam Insulation!

in this video I'm gonna talk about why I hate spray-foam and we're going to do it right now a little while ago I did a video on a exterior door install and in the video I mentioned that I hate spray foam and I said spray foam is a relatively new thing right and I worked on so many houses and I've had to fix so many things that have spray foam why do I see so much spray foam because it doesn't work it just makes things worse please don't use spray foam use insulation talking whatever you can or if you're gonna use spray foam don't load spray foam into a small crack because it's called expandable foam for a reason that's all that's my rant and I actually got a lot of comments saying why can't you spray foam how come I'm concerned about this now I'm sorry it this is just my feeling of spray foam and I think it is a fine product if you use it carefully the thing that you have to be careful with is it expands and I've seen so many people just loading cracks and holes up all over their house and it just makes a mess it makes things worse it breaks things so today we're gonna do a little experiment and I hope you enjoy it so here I've hacked together a little experiment took some scrap pieces of wood and basically what this is gonna represent is a door jamb this is gonna be the gap in between the door frame and the framing and this is where a lot of people insulate or where you do insulate but this is a typical place where somebody will insulate with spray foam insulation this backing is going to represent the inside of the house or the outside and these little pieces of eighth inch plywood are going to represent the trim so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this side and I'm gonna spray foam the way that I would spray foam and then on this side I'm gonna spray foam the way I have seen people spray foam and the way I don't think you should spray foam and the thing that causes the issues with spray foam here's what we're going to use this is great stuff this is actually big gap filler and I could have got window indoor but I want to emphasize the issue here and I think this stuff will do it right because not all the time people are buying the stuff and and knowing so this stuff big gap filler is what it means this stuff expands quite a bit I think window and door filler doesn't expand as much it'll say window in door by the same brand so I'm gonna go ahead and get this ready and I'm gonna phone these in and we're gonna wait until this cures we're gonna see what happens all right I got my spray foam ready you got the tube on there this is green for go and I'm gonna be very careful and fill this gap up the way that I would fill it so part of this is knowing how much this is gonna expand I'm not really sure because I haven't used it in a while but I'm gonna be careful as I go so I'm gonna start right in the corner so that I get every little crevice window nice and slow [Applause] okay and I'm gonna keep piling on top of that foam that's all so now I know it's going into the gaps there where I go and the expanding part of this is gonna fill those gaps up pretty good anyways and I just want to put a nice even layer in there I'm gonna stop right there so I didn't fill the cavity up all the way okay because I know this stuff is gonna expand now let's go to this side and see what I have seen before so this is what people do right to the edge yeah this stuff makes a mess there then what people do is they take their trim just show you that okay and then people will take the trim whatever it is they're using the cover this time weeks and they'll nail their trim in there we go so now we're gonna let that sit and see what happens [Music] all right in about 12 hours here's the results you can see this one really actually not what I expected they didn't think it was gonna expand that much over the edge like that and then this one that was all sealed up you can see the statue of foam it just came out of every little crevice because it didn't have anywhere to escape so I was actually expecting this to to push this trim off although I sealed this up really good I put a bunch of nails in this but I've heard of this stuff cracking window and door frames believe it or not and that's kind of what I was trying to achieve but it didn't do it luckily with this one and this so I was hoping this would be a lot less but what I was attempting to show is I use an old kitchen knife and then I can kind of cut this off flush first of all I can take all this off just kind of break it but here's the issue so say this is a finished surface now I got all this spray foam here I'm either gonna have to sand it off or try and make it look nice it might take some paint off with it take all this off [Music] same right here that could be a finished surface that's kind of ruined now okay and then you would put your trim on and that would be a lot cleaner than what's going on here because this is this could be going inside of the house and like I said on the finished surface of the trim looking ahead there were nail holes here and that stuff snuck right out of the nail holes I'm gonna take this off and here's the thing the foam gets in every little crevice so that's it's great for that but you have the dangers of this it's just it could go wherever it wants to and kind of make a mess you'd have a great insulator but you might have other problems whereas even this is unpredictable so I like to just use fiberglass insulation tuck it in there I know it's not gonna expand or anything and you can put my trim on and be done what are your thoughts are you for spray foam are you against spray foam are you indifferent did you ever have an issue with this or are you like what is this guy talking about I've never never had a problem let me know in the comment section so that's it that's my little experiment and I guess my rant I just basically want people to use spray foam responsibly and if you liked this video make sure you like it and if you want to see some my other content you can click here or here and I hope you enjoy it thanks for watching

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 72,677

Keywords: Home, home owner, home owner repair, diy, how to, do it yourself, fix, house, house repair, maintenance, spray foam, spray foam insulation, how to use spray foam, how to use spray foam insulation in a can, spray foam insulation diy, great stuff spray foam insulation, great stuff foam, great stuff spray foam, experiments, the fixer

Id: _eQcPiFhj40

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 11 2019