Does Spray Foam In An Attic

The installer sprayed foam directly on the metal flues.

Does spray foam in an attic.

Thus the air in the attic is connected with the air in the house. Yes using spray foam we have added your attic to the conditioned space. The attic you see in the photo here is a different home but it does have one feature in common besides the spray foam. This spray foam is applied as a low or high pressure two component polyurethane spray foam that can be applied onto walls in unvented attics to ducts and ceilings and in vented attics and crawl spaces.

However in a traditionally insulated attic insulation on the ceiling the attic is vented. Intumescent coatings are not always needed to coat spray foam in the attic in order to meet code thermal barrier requirements. When we seal the attic with spray foam it s as tight as a butter tub. An open cell foam low density spray polyurethane is a spray applied to provide continuous insulation and an air sealing barrier.

Using spray foam insulation in an attic is a popular energy saving project. If you look closely you ll see two exhaust flues on the left side. You should never do this. Sealing the top of the house keeps the air you paid to heat and cool inside your home.

When spray foam is installed on the underside of the roof deck the attic space is insulated from heat that otherwise would be entering the attic. You ll also see another safety hazard and code violation. During the spring summer and fall relative humidity rh in a spray foamed attic often exceeds the comfort threshold of 60. The insulation reduces wildly high temperature spikes and so the attic becomes a conditioned part of the home like any other room.

Here s the answer to the question posed in my article title. Spray foam attic insulation is used primarily to act as a barrier to limit air movement and reduce the amount of energy loss that homes experience during the season changes. As a result you can reduce the temperature in your attic by a lot anywhere from 120 degrees to around 95 during peak summer. Even if there is moisture in your attic from a leaking plumbing line a swamp cooler or a similar issue the spray foam insulation will deter the growth of organics in your home.

And the benefits range from much lower utility bills to fewer pests to reduced sound transfer. It s quick and easy to do. If you want you can even transform a spray foamed attic into a finished space. Normally in occupied areas all spray foam must be covered by a 15 minute thermal barrier such as thick drywall per code requirements in irc section 316 4 and ibc section 2603 4.

But in many spray foamed attics it can be hard to manage humidity. If you leave the insulation in the attic floor after insulating the roofline the attic will be cooler in winter than if you remove the insulation.