The Mad Surveyor

Concerning the cost of installing polyurethane spray foam, polyurethane foam is a high performance product that insulates seals and bonds and requires no ventilation because it creates a warm roof. It is also professionally installed by typically 2 operatives per onsite van. Clearly you cannot get this for the price of an inferior product like mineral wool. The foam specified will be 2 component (polyol and isocyanate) rigid, fast cure foam, British Standard Class 1, fire rated, high density (k value 0.020 W/m2.k) and 95% closed cell affording breathing properties to the timber substrate. This is a high performance product and bears no relation to the cheap canned one component foams either used by our competitors or found in the DIY market. Like all things, you get what you pay for.

The foam will draft proof (air leakage is a major source of energy loss), insulates (reduces transmission of energy by thermal conductivity) and sound proof to a large degree, The depth of foam applied range anywhere from 40 mm nominal to 150 mm nominal and is governed by the U value that is required and the k value (thermal conductivity of the insulation material). Depth of insulation foam is given by factoring the U value required into the k value and normalising for units to get the depth in millimetres. We do this calculation on behalf of the customer and can if required do proof of calculation if these are needed to support a planning application. He have designed the industry’s first U value calculator for composite substrates and will produce a thermal resistance R value as the sum of (R0 + R1 + R2 + … etc) to get the U value needed. From that it is a straightforward to get the depth of foam needed by the foam’s k value - (d = k/U and then normalise for millimetres).

We heat fuse the foam to the substrate at high temperature (120 degrees) and at high pressure (600 psi). We essentially bring a polyurethane factory to the customers door step (a large van with £70,000 of foam making equipment) and make the foam on site. We guarantee the foam for a minimum of 25 years.

Polyurethane foam is the best insulation solution by far and will out perform, products like mineral wool (which always need venting thus creating drafts that suck heat out as mineral wool does not seal) by a factor of 6 to 1 under real world conditions. Laboratory results for calculating U values rely on heat box still air conditions and this gives polyurethane foam a typical performance advantage over mineral or glass wool by a factor of 3 to 1.  If you want the best it is has to be a polyurethane foam solution. 

IsoSpray now also now supply professional ‘DIY’ of two component foams suitable to be sprayed at ambient temperature. If you are capable of spraying and doing the job yourself then this might help reduce your costs if cost is your primary concern. IsoSpray always guarantee the lowest rates for all products for all work we do.

I often get asked who we think our main competitors are. Well, we only rate 4 other companies in the spray foam industry for competence, technical ability, application skill and having the ability to stick around financially to honour any guarantees. On the latter, must companies don’t last more than a few years without undergoing a metamorphosis and reappearing under a new limited liability company name with risk capital of just £2.00. And we wish some would stop using non rated British Standard Class 1 foams. And we wish they would tell the truth…

But maybe the reader can better appreciate the competition we face with the following spoof enquiry we received.

Dr Nana Bannana
Email: Bannanaskin@hotmail.com
Address: 14 Fruit Village
District: South Glos
City or town: Ding Dong
County: Lalala
Post code: Bs37 89k
Telephone: 01454 678991
Mobile: 07791874555
Comments: u smell like poo

Unfortunately our competitor is a little intellectually challenged as we did an IP trace through one of colleagues in the IT industry and he reported that the IP address was issued by ISP provider serving one of our known competitors (the same IP block has been used before). No, we want name and shame them here because it is quite laughable really. But let us just say this company is based in the North West region of England in a city famed for football. And this is not the first time we have received such rubbish from one of our competitors. We have a file of such enquiries and maybe one day we will publish and name and shame.

I say competitors but really I should not adorn them with even that respect, who would really want to do business with a bunch of school kids masquerading as a spray foam company?  To be a valued competitor you would think they would tackle the following: honouring guarantees, do the job right first time, using the right foam, telling the truth to customers, and lastly showing respect to other competitors who do it all so much better.

And who has the time to make spoof enquiries if you are running a successful spray foam company? Our competitors apparently.